


Sweet Summer Children

by PanBoleyn



Series: The Iron Gauntlet and the Silk Glove [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2014-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-12 17:08:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are four years between the finding of direwolves and the King's visit to Winterfell. Four years for children to grow and learn, and for adults to play their games, and perhaps learn as well. These last years of summer are more important than they know.</p><p>Chapter 12: There's much Robin Arryn hates about his illness, but the colors that follow sounds through the air is something he's learned to love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sand Wolf

The Cinnamon Wind is a trading ship, and everyone aboard is expected to be of use. Jon bought his passage but he also agreed to help where he can, so he learns to clean the deck and tie sailors' knots, and he carries goods to and from the ship when they stop at ports along the way to King's Landing. He doesn't mind, really; keeping busy keeps him from dwelling on his past... or his future, for that matter. He doesn't know his mother's goodbrother, though she writes affectionately of him. He'll answer to Lord Renly regardless of what the man is like, and now that the capital is drawing ever closer, Jon can't quite forget that.

 

And then there's his mother's husband, Lord Stannis, and their children. He's written to Shireen and Arthur, but what if the letters are not enough, in the end? And what will a man known to be as hard and cold as Stannis Baratheon really think of his wife's bastard, for all she'd told Jon he didn't care?

 

Really, it's good he has work to distract him. The fetching and carrying is easy, the knots and learning how to raise a sail are definitely not. It keeps him occupied. Ghost tends to stay in the part of the hold where Jon and the crew sleep on hammocks – the deck of a ship is not the best place for a growing direwolf. Some of the crew fear him, but others are fascinated, and know that when Jon's there, Ghost will behave himself.

 

And then there are the stories. The Cinnamon Wind has taken her captain and crew around the known world, even over the Jade Sea to cities like Yi Ti and Asshai. They have so many stories to tell, of a red god of fire whose influence spreads over Essos, the sorcerers of Qarth, the fearless riders of the Dothraki. In exchange, Jon tells them Northern legends, the ones he heard from Old Nan or the household men-at-arms, or even Uncle Benjen. The Kings of Winter, the Long Night, and the Others. Children of the Forest. Raji is a follower of the red god R'hllor but he's curious about Westerosi religions, so Jon tells him all about the Old Gods and hears quite a bit about this Lord of Light in exchange. It would be a more pleasant religion if they didn't like to burn things so much, he decides. The Islanders on the boat mention that sex is holy to them, and Jon thinks Theon would make a good worshipper of their faith, what with his frequent trips to Winter Town's brothel.

 

Most amusingly, he even picks up some words and phrases in the bastardized Valyrian dialects of the Free Cities, and some in the language of the Summer Isles (the captain, Quhuru Mo, and half his crew are from there). Of course, none of it is the type of language he can repeat in polite company – which is really why he finds it so funny. He considers, briefly, not getting off at King's Landing; instead he can try to join the crew, see all the places they've seen. It's a tempting thought, but then they're docking at the capital and Jon knows he can't go through with it. He doesn't really want to; he wants to know his family, he's just nervous.

 

His Stark siblings loved him, as did his father, but he never belonged with them. Will he belong here, when he looks so much like a Stark even if he will never bear the name? He doesn't know, but Captain Mo is snapping his fingers for Jon to help them unload one last time, and he's left at the docks, Ghost at his side. The Red Keep is easy enough to find, but he isn't sure... Can he just go up there and be let in?

 

This was the sort of thing he probably should have asked about in a letter. But before he could make an idiot of himself by wandering about the city, someone tapped him on the shoulder. Turning around, Jon found himself facing a boy of his own age or thereabouts, maybe a bit younger, with mussed brown hair and friendly hazel eyes. Also, he wore Baratheon livery. “Hello, I'm Devan Seaworth, Lord Stannis' squire. Lady Ashara sent me to fetch you – something about Lord Renly being a bit scattered and probably not remembering he should send someone. And she wishes to see you first in any case.” Devan's eyes fall on Ghost. “Gods, is that a wolf?”

 

Jon blinks, considering the boy. He knows the name Seaworth – his mother and siblings have mentioned a Ser Davos Seaworth in their letters. This must be his son. “A direwolf,” he explains. “My trueborn Stark siblings and I each have one; we found the pups in the wolfswood.”

 

“But wolves... They're wild creatures,” Devan says, eyes going wide. “Don't you fear he'll turn on you, or attack someone?”

 

“He won't attack anyone who doesn't hurt me,” Jon says with certainty. “Here, come closer. Ghost, stay.” Devan looks uncertain, but finally he puts his hand up by Ghost's muzzle like one would for a dog. Ghost's ears twitch, but he stays still, and Devan pats his head.

 

“Well,” he says, straightening up. “We'd best get inside; my lady is impatient to see you.”

 

“Thank you, I've never been here before,” Jon admits as he follows Devan toward the keep.

 

“My father was born here,” Devan says easily. “And my mother too. But I never came here before Lord Stannis made me his squire. My older brothers told me things, though – they spent some of their childhood here too before Father was knighted. And I've explored a bit. You'll have more time to do that than I did, if you want. Lord Renly's an easier sort of man.”

 

Jon's a bit distracted by the bustle of the city – he's seen White Harbour and Oldtown now, and they both smell a lot better than King's Landing, but there's something different to those cities in the capital besides that. He can't tell yet if it's good or bad. Devan points out places as they go, and he listens, but he knows he won't remember all of it. He gets a lot of strange looks, or rather, Ghost gets a lot of strange looks. Jon clenches his jaw and curls his fingers into Ghost's ruff, keeping him close. These Southrons can keep their mistrust, he thinks, and almost laughs; a very Northern thought for a boy who felt he had little of it in him.

 

The Red Keep is smaller than Winterfell. The towers go higher, but overall it's smaller. Jon hadn't expected that, but strangely enough it helps his nervousness. He follows Devan through the corridors with Ghost trotting at his heels and his bag slung over one shoulder, and he's painfully aware of the stares. He exchanged his Northern clothes for ones bought in the market at Oldtown – it was just too warm to continue wearing them by then. But he's still not in court clothes, he looks so much like his father it's uncanny, and even if neither of these things were true, Ghost at his side would be enough to have every eye on him at least for a moment. The looks in the city streets were amusing, but these stares hold a judgment that was not present in the cityfolk's gazes. It sets his teeth on edge.

 

Do Southrons have nothing better to do with their time than gawk at unfamiliar sights? Jon forces himself to shake off the annoyance; he's spent his entire life with Lady Stark's eyes making him an interloper in what was supposedly his home, with his father's bannermen and their people looking at him askance. This is nothing compared to that. Devan notices the stares too, and he gives Jon an apologetic look. Jon manages to smile. “I'm used to it, and Ghost will draw eyes,” he says.

 

“My father used to be a smuggler from Flea Bottom – they look at him like he doesn't belong too,” Devan says. “And my brothers and me, as well. My mother says they're just perfumed idiots.”

 

Jon laughs aloud, and it doesn't seem so bad, when he knows he's not the only outcast. Soon enough, they're at the door to the Lord of Dragonstone's chambers, though, and Jon's breath catches in his throat. He doesn't – he's not – Jon knows his mother, knows Shireen and Arthur, only through letters. Letters are wonderful in their way, but... What if they don't like him? What if it turns out he is too Northern, too Stark after all?

 

He's trembling when the Baratheon guardsmen let them pass, and he tries to hide it but he's absolutely certain he's failed. He has a moment to take a few steps into the room, to recognize it as a solar not unlike Lady Stark's at Winterfell. Then, suddenly, he's caught up in a firm embrace, the scent of... The perfume is cinnamon and other scents he doesn't know. Distantly, he hears Devan murmur a farewell, footsteps and a closing door, but he isn't paying attention.

 

After a moment, the woman holding him draws back so Jon can see her face. Her face framed by hair the same black as his. Her cheekbones are like his, and the look in those violet eyes is one he knows too well, and has never seen directed his way before. The way a mother looks at her child. “M-mother?” he says, stumbling over the word like a child even though he knows the answer.

 

Ashara Dayne Baratheon puts her hands on Jon's shoulders, gaze sweeping over him, and Jon hopes desperately that she likes what she sees. “You look like Arthur,” she says, and Jon's confusion must show on his face, because everyone has always told him he looks like his father. “Oh, you have your father's look, but these dark curls, certain things in your face... You look like my brother.”

 

Jon smiles, uncertainly. "I, I do? Truly?"

 

She smiles, hand cupping his cheek. "You don't need to be afraid, Jon. You'll belong here, I promise."

 

The door crashes open, a pair of children tumbling in. The girl is about Arya's age, the boy about Bran's, and both of them peer up at Jon with blue-violet eyes. "Are you our brother Jon?" the boy - Arthur, it has to be - asks. Jon doesn't know what to say, his throat strangely tight, so he nods.

 

The next thing he knows, he has a small boy colliding with him, wrapping his arms around Jon's waist, and the girl - Shireen - is giggling. "Arthur! Don't ambush him!" She smiles. "Sorry about him," she tells Jon, an impish light in her eyes before she blushes and ducks her head.

 

Jon hugs Arthur back, that lump in his throat still there. But it isn't a bad thing, not really. Still, he can't let himself cry when he has a younger brother clamoring to know all about his journey and a younger sister slowly asking questions about the stories he and the sailors exchanged. When he has a mother for the first time in his life, watching the three of them with the kind of soft smile he used to see directed at his Stark siblings by Lady Catelyn.

 

The door opens again, and Jon finds himself facing two tall men, black-haired and blue-eyed. The elder of them has a tightly-clenched jaw and he's mostly bald, the younger wears his long hair tied back and has a lazy grin. "Jon, this is my husband, Stannis, and his brother, Renly, who you'll be squiring for." Stannis nods, politely enough, and it startles Jon, who had deep-down expected more of the way Lady Stark looked at him. "Your mother will be accompanying you to Sunspear so Doran Martell can make a legal Dayne of you."

 

Jon's mother straightens. "Robert gave consent, then?"

 

Stannis nods. "I spoke to Lord Arryn; he took care of the rest. Which reminds me, we must speak of his son." He looks at Jon, Arthur, and Shireen impassively. "It can wait, however." He leaves the room, and Renly shakes his head.

 

"Don't mind him, Snow - or, no, should I start out by calling you Dayne, get us both accustomed?"

 

"I - Jon is fine, my lord."

 

"Well, then you must call me Renly."

 

"That's your name, Uncle Renly, what else would he call you?" Arthur pipes up.

 

"Exactly my point, dear nephew."

 

Jon is silent, unsure what to make of his distant stepfather and remarkably friendly knight-master. A hand slips into his, and he looks down to see Shireen, the greyscale unable to mar her pretty eyes or sweet smile. He smiles back, thinking of how tight his mother hugged him, and... He misses Robb and Bran and especially Arya, but... He thinks he really can belong here.


	2. A Good Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa travels south to Highgarden, finding that leaving home is not as easy as she thought, but that maybe things will end as well as she's always hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, my Sansa is significantly more nervous than the canonical Sansa was about going south. It may seem OOC, but I justify it this way; in canon all of Sansa's dreams seemed to be coming true, but more than that, she had her father, her best friend, her sister (someone familiar even if they didn't get along), and her septa, not to mention a good number of the household men-at-arms and other staff she'd grown up around. This Sansa is alone amongst new faces except for her septa, and for all she wants to go south, that is still going to get a different reaction from an eleven-year-old girl.

Ser Garlan starts calling Sansa “our blue rose” the day he, Ser Loras, and their escort of Tyrell guards arrive in Winterfell. Arya, who has been sulking since Jon left for King's Landing, rolls her eyes and scoffs quietly when she hears it. Sansa ignores her and smiles prettily at her soon-to-be goodbrother. She likes the nickname; it makes her feel as though at least one Tyrell already considers her one of them.

 

She likes Ser Garlan all the more when he barely startles when Lady walks up to him, investigating him the way she does anyone who gets too close to Sansa. Instead, he chuckles, offering his hand for Lady to sniff as though she were a dog. “So you're a rose with claws and teeth to protect you instead of thorns, is that it, Lady Sansa?” he teases her.

 

“Lady's good, ser, you see?” she says as Lady butts Garlan's hand playfully.

 

“I do see,” he agrees, scratching Lady behind the ears.

 

As for the other Tyrell brother, Ser Loras is like a knight out of one of Sansa's favorite songs, and that makes her want to like him. But she doesn't like how suspicious he is of Lady, so it makes her like him a little less. Arya doesn't like him at all, but she monopolizes his time for far longer than Sansa would have thought asking him about Renly Baratheon. Loras, after all, was Renly's squire until he was knighted; Jon is replacing him. Of course Arya wants to know about him, though Sansa's pretty sure her sister keeps Nymeria close to watch Loras twitch. It's very Arya, and Sansa won't admit that it is amusing.

 

Sansa, meanwhile, spends more time asking Garlan – and Loras to an extent – about Highgarden. And, hesitantly, about Willas. All she really knows about her future husband is that he's the heir to Highgarden, and a jousting accident left him a cripple. Oh, and that he is about eleven years older than she – it's hardly a strange difference in ages, but it is a little intimidating. “He's kind, no need to worry about that – he was the one who started calling me Garlan the Gallant, when I was small. To protect me, as it happens.”

 

“Protect you? How?”

 

“Oh, I was chubby as a boy, and we've an uncle who ran to fat even more obviously than our rather plump father – they call him Garth the Gross. So Willas struck first – he threatened me with names like Garlan the Greensick, Garlan the Galling, and Garlan the Gargoyle first, though. Elder brothers, I find, are like that – at least with their younger brothers. I tease Loras in the same way. But none of us are quite so mischievous with Margaery – not that that stops her from being so about us.”

 

Sansa likes what she hears, and yet... The day before she is to leave, she sends Septa Mordane and Jeyne Poole away, barring her bedchamber door and dropping to the floor. She buries her face in Lady's ruff and between one breath and the next, she's sobbing. Why? Because she overheard someone talking about Rickon, who hates that people keep leaving. She heard them say “the little lordling won't remember the bastard boy, or his pretty sister.”

 

Rickon won't remember her. He won't remember that when he was learning to walk, he wouldn't hold anyone's hand but hers. And she... She won't see him and Bran in the practice yards the way she used to watch Robb – and Jon too, she can admit that now he isn't here to make her mother's lips thin and her blue eyes sad. She won't be here to see Robb marry his Dornish lady, who is rumored to be a great beauty. She'll never have the chance, now, to stop fighting with Arya and mayhaps be proper sisters, will she? And Mother, and Father... The septa is a good woman, but how is she supposed to learn to be a great lady without her mother there? How can a place be home without her father's kind eyes and rare warm smile?

 

Sansa has always dreamed of going south, but she's never understood until now what that means. What it is for a girl to leave home for her marriage. When she finally sits back, though, Lady licks the tears off her cheeks, as though saying that Sansa still has her, will always have her. And she laughs a little, shaky and watery, but a true laugh. It's then that a knock comes on her door. “Sansa?” It's her mother, and Sansa takes a deep breath, straightening her clothes before she opens the door.

 

"Mother. I was just-"

 

"Shh, sweetling," her mother says, brushing her thumb over Sansa's cheek. "You don't have to explain. I understand all too well."

 

"Were you frightened?" Sansa has to ask. She can't imagine her beloved father as someone to fear, but she knows people find him so because he's stern-faced. And she does know that her mother was meant to marry her uncle first, the uncle the Mad King killed. Her mother smiles, a little sadly, and strokes Sansa’s hair.

 

“Most girls are,” she says gently. “I... had known your uncle, Brandon, but I never met your father. Suddenly, Brandon was dead and I was to marry him instead. I did wonder how we would get on, but I knew we would do our duty, and that with time love would grow. And it did. As it will with you and Lord Willas.”

 

Sansa shakes her head. “But if it doesn’t?” She wants to believe that it will, that it will all be like the songs, but with her departure upon her, and Jeyne having fallen ill so that she’ll have to come to join Sansa later instead of leaving with her, Sansa can’t quite do it. She’d never considered that she would have to leave alone, to live with strangers. She wants to go south, has always dreamed of it, but to go alone?

 

“It will, sweetling,” her mother insists. She pauses, and then adds, “And if it does not, you’ll have your children, and you will both love them. And that is the best love one can have.”

 

Sansa doesn’t know if she ought to be grateful that her mother didn’t lie, or wish she had.

 

***

 

Highgarden is every bit as lovely as Sansa’s dreams of the South. It sits in a green valley, and Highgarden itself is all white columns and terraced gardens, roses climbing the sides, mosaic floors and frescoed walls. Sansa's bedchamber overlooks the godswood, where the trees are apple, or weeping willows, and her walls and floor are decorated with images from songs.

 

Lord Tyrell says she has the run of Highgarden, inside and out; Sansa explores with Lady at her side, ignoring Septa Mordane's admonitiona that she should not take 'that wolf' everywhere. Harder to ignore are the sidelong looks from the servants and men-at-arms, but Lady is her best friend. She doesn't even have Arya here, much less Jeyne Poole. She can't give Lady up.

 

It's not that people are unkind. Lady Olenna is brusque and dismissive, but near as Sansa can tell, the woman called the 'Queen of Thorns' is like that with everyone. Garlan is kind as he's been since they met, and Lord Tyrell is courteous, though he eyes Lady much the way Ser Loras had at Winterfell.

 

The other ladies of Highgarden are wonderful. Lady Leonette is as friendly as her husband, and Lady Alerie is kind, asking Sansa how she is adjusting. Lady Margaery declares herself thrilled to have another sister and takes charge of showing Sansa around. She's wary of Lady until the direwolf licks her hand like the half-grown pup she is. The Margaery laughs and relaxes.

 

But Sansa sees little of her husband-to-be. "It isn't you," Leonette assured Sansa one day in one of the terrace gardens. "Willas is... He was fostered with his mother's family in Oldtown, the Hightowers, and he's... never been entirely comfortable here."

 

Sansa would like to say that, new to Highgarden as she is, she is not entirely comfortable either, and a betrothed who ignored her is not helping. She understands that to him she's little more than a child, but how can she be a good wife to Willas Tyrell if he won't speak to her? But it's not proper to complain, so she bites her tongue. What is there to say, really?

 

***

 

At Winterfell, Sansa was never drawn to the godswood, preferring the sept as her mother did. But at Highgarden, where she's gripped by homesickness at the strangest moments, she funds herself in their godswood. There's a bench there, and Sansa is sitting there, enjoying the quiet, when she hears a thump. It sounds heavier than a footfall, and she looks up to see Willas Tyrell walking toward her. She gets to her feet, curtseying and murmuring a polite greeting, but he waves a hand as he sits down.

 

"Please don't. We're to marry, and I should think courtesies will only make that difficult. I'm sorry; I should have come to you sooner."

 

Sansa isn't sure what she ought to say, since he doesn't want courtesies. Finally she settles on, "I'm glad you've come now, Lord Willas."

 

"Just Willas, please, Lady Sansa."

 

Sansa smiles. "Then you should just call me Sansa." The words earn her a smile in return, at least until Lady pads forward, standing in front of Willas with her head tilted curiously. Willas doesn’t laugh as Garlan did, but neither does he look suspicious as Ser Loras and Lord Tyrell did. Instead, he merely raises an eyebrow, and Sansa recalls that he breeds hounds as well as horses. Not the same thing as direwolves, but enough to make him react differently, it seems.

 

“Does she think me a threat?” he asks, a wry humor in his voice.

 

“More a curiosity, I think,” Sansa replies, and Willas nods as he holds out his hand toward Lady, palm up so she can get his scent. After a moment of sniffing, Lady flops onto her stomach, having clearly decided that Willas is a friend.

 

They sit in oddly comfortable silence for a moment, and then Willas says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t think - you are of the North, did I interrupt you at prayer?”

 

Sansa shakes her head. “No, I - I was raised to follow the old gods and the new, but I wasn’t here to pray. I like the peace of it.”

 

“And the lack of roses?” he asks, voice dry, a faint grin blooming on his face when Sansa laughs sheepishly.

 

“The scent is lovely, it’s just...”

 

“Overpowering sometimes? You may know I was fostered in Oldtown; after years of salt breezes it took time to reaccustom myself to roses.”

 

“I’m used to pines and a hint of snow,” Sansa admits.

 

“Snow? Even in summer? So it’s true then, in the North it always snows?” There’s a glint in his eye that Sansa recognizes from Robb and Theon after a moment - he’s teasing her.

 

“Not always, far from it, but there’s always a hint of it in the air.” She can’t help but give a serious answer, for all that he was japing with her. “It’s lovely; I never really noticed that until I came south.” And left it, she doesn’t say.

 

He looks at her, a thoughtful expression in his eyes. “Tell me of it?”

 

Sansa nods, but some strange boldness makes her add, “If you will tell me of Oldtown.”

 

Willas nods, eyes dancing. “A fair trade. And I should think, with all that, we will have plenty to discuss for some time.”

 

“Well,” Sansa says, “that can only be a good thing.”

 

They talk for hours, about Winterfell’s godswood, the winter town and the glass gardens. About the Citadel and the bustle of Oldtown. Sansa talks about Bran scaling the walls of Winterfell, about Arya acting like a boy, Robb and Theon and Jon in the practice yard, Rickon clinging to her hand as he walks. Willas tells her about Malora the Mad Maid, who doesn’t sound near as mad as her name suggests, about his grandfather Lord Leyton, the Voice of Oldtown who lives up to his name with a bellow that is instantly recognizable, about his uncle Baelor who Willas served as squire for until the accident that ruined his leg.

 

They are still talking when a maid comes to collect them for the evening meal, and Willas offers Sansa his arm. “We will have to walk slower than you will be used to,” he says, almost apologetically, and Sansa shakes her head.

 

“I don’t mind,” she tells him, and when they walk into the hall like that, she catches Leonette’s eye. The impish grin she gets in return tells her that her future goodsister likely had something to do with Willas coming to her, and Sansa can only be grateful.

 

She doesn’t know for sure what will happen next, but Sansa thinks she has made a good beginning, at least.

 


	3. The Stags of House Baratheon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Renly is a force of nature that Jon can't quite understand, and Stannis is the first one ever to tell Jon the simple truth.

It’s Lord Renly who shows Jon to his bedchamber. That makes sense; it adjoins Renly’s own apartments as is fitting for a squire and his knight-master. “The room hasn’t been unoccupied for long, but it’s still been aired out for you. I’ll leave you to unpack, and we can work out how things are going to be in a few hours, hmm?”

 

Jon blinks, then nods. Renly seems remarkably unconcerned about making sure Jon knows his duties, at least for now, and that leaves Jon feeling wrong-footed. He’s used to knowing what’s expected of him, he isn’t usually at loose ends. But here he is, alone but for Ghost in a room twice the size of the one he occupied at Winterfell, with a window that overlooks the ocean. Ghost lies down by the small hearth and Jon crosses to the window, looking out. The sea air is bracing, not in the same way the cool winds of Winterfell are, but in a way that Jon likes regardless.

 

He doesn't have that much to unpack; he's never wanted for anything but nor has he ever had an abundance of belongings. His clothes are put away quickly - he doesn't even know if hell need them here. Most of them are too warm for this climate, not to mention that Devan Seaworth is Lord Stannis' squire and he wears Baratheon livery. Jon is likely to be dressed much the same. And otherwise... Lord Renly had called him a Dayne. Does that mean... "Maybe Robb was right," he tells Ghost. "Maybe I'll be all in purple and silver soon enough."

 

Jon doesn't know what to make of that. He hates being a bastard, but it's all he knows. “Jon Dayne,” he murmurs, trying out the sound of it. “Well?” he asks the direwolf pup. Ghost cocks his head, and if the wolf were human Jon’s certain he’d be saying “You’re an idiot” right now. He’s right, of course, so Jon lies down, trying to sleep for a little while. He was up before dawn today to fulfill his final duties on the ship, and all the nerves of meeting his mother and his brother and sister by her aren’t helping him feel any less tired. And yet, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep, not with his mind spinning as it is...

 

He wakes to the sound of someone knocking on his door. Ghost trots at his heel as Jon rises, scrubbing at his eyes before he opens his door to find Lord Renly and a man he doesn’t know. Jon lets them in, studying the stranger. He’s not that much older than Jon, and the golden roses on his clothing look a lot like the seals on letters that came to Father about Sansa, from Highgarden. So, a Tyrell.

 

“Dayne, this is Loras Tyrell; he was my squire before you. And I’m sure he’ll have many disparaging things to say about my skills as a knight-master. I’d say ignore every word, but unfortunately every word is true.”

 

Loras Tyrell grins, mischief lighting his gold eyes. "I wanted to meet you before my brother Garlan and I travel north to fetch your sister Lady Sansa. We - gods above, what is that?" He's looking at Ghost, and Jon bites back a frown. Ser Loras sounds disapproving, as opposed to Devan's astonishment this morning. Jon mislikes that.

 

"A direwolf. All my father's children have one," Jon says, scrupulously polite in his tone. Including Sansa, he thinks but doesn't say.

 

"A living sigil," Renly laughs. "Relax, Loras, the pup is well-trained enough. Didn't leave the boy's side when he was with Ashara and the children earlier. I'm sure your future goodsister has hers just as behaved."

 

"More," Jon says, faintly amused. "Sansa is the best behaved, and her Lady takes after her." All the pups took after their masters, a curiosity many of the Winterfell household had remarked upon.

 

It turns out that Ser Loras is here to inspect Jon’s equipment. He declares Jon's dagger and sword passable, but can't believe that's all Jon brought. “You will need a good bit more than this,” he tells Jon, shaking his head. “Proper armor, for a start.”

 

“I... My father said...”

 

“That, typically, it is the duty of a knight-master to outfit his squire,” Renly cuts in. “And so it is. Loras forgets because his own father always made sure he took care of obtaining the equipment Loras needed. He was the only squire who wore both his knight-master’s colors and his own, or at least his sigil. He’d never wear all the colors together; they’d clash and he would hate that.”

 

There’s something in the way Renly teases Ser Loras, and the way the knight rolls his eyes affectionately, that reminds Jon of something. He can’t quite place it, but it just seems... Inexplicably, he thinks of the looks his father and stepmother sometimes exchange, but that doesn’t make any sense at all, does it?

 

“I’ll have to send you to Tobho Mott,” Renly declares. “Best armorer in the city, you know.” Jon’s eyes widen in alarm.

 

“My lord, I cannot ask-”

 

“You’re not. Besides, you are my squire and my goodsister’s son besides; it would be unseemly if you didn’t appear as the rest of us do.”

 

Jon doesn’t know how to respond in the face of Renly’s cheerful insistence - when Jon objects again the other man literally covers his mouth to silence him. Ser Loras laughs and says that trying to stop Renly is like stopping the weather, with a note in his voice that seems impossibly fond. Again, Jon isn’t quite sure what to make of that.

 

But, for all that he’s confusing about it, Renly seems to be kind, or at least he apparently intends to treat Jon kindly. Since it could be very different, Jon decides to stop trying to puzzle over it and try to just let things happen as they will.

 

"Well, come on, then," Renly says, impatient. "We may as well start getting you fitted for armor and liveried clothes. Oh, do you have a horse? I'm a great one for riding and on trips away from the capital I will expect my squire to come with me."

 

Job shakes his head. "I had a horse in Winterfell, but I could not take one with me on the ship," he explains.

 

"Another thing, then. For now, make use of one of the palace horses, Hmm? Some of this will likely be handled by your mother's family, I don't doubt. Are you a good rider?"

 

"Yes. Not so much a jouster, but..."

 

"Well, he won't help much with that," Loras cuts in before Renly can speak. "Talk to Ser Aron Santagar, though; he'll help you improve. Is it not taken seriously in the North?"

 

"Serious enough," Jon says, trying not to bristle at the implication. "I simply don't have much talent for it. My brother Robb does, but I'd rather a sword in my hands."

 

Renly bursts out laughing. "Careful there, Dayne, or you'll find Loras challenging you to a duel."

  
  


\---

 

For all that Jon often wishes Lord Renly would spend more time training him instead of leaving him to Aron Santagar, he likes the younger Baratheon brother. Often, he suspects that when Renly talks at him about the small council, his work as Master of Laws, he’s not just rambling. He is, perhaps, training Jon in a different way, which Jon isn’t sure how to react to. He’d expected to be trained for knighthood and no more, not to be given even basic instruction in politics.

 

But still, he likes Renly. He can understand him, can get a read on him. It’s the elder Baratheon, Lord Stannis, his stepfather, that Jon can’t understand. They don’t interact much, but when they do, Stannis is... Not courteous, but then he isn’t particularly courteous to anyone. But he speaks to Jon as much as anyone else at the meals they take as a family, he doesn’t look at him like... Like...

 

Like Lady Stark, Jon thinks, and feels a rush of guilt for the way he resents the mother Robb and Arya (and his other Stark siblings too, of course) love so much. He doesn’t hate her, still remembers that he considered her an ally of sorts in his wish to join his mother instead of remaining in Winterfell, but... He’s never understood why his existence is his fault. He didn’t ask to be born to his parents, he never asked to be what he is.

  
And now, he has a stepfather who doesn’t seem to pay his difference any mind. Jon has no idea what to make of it, so one day when Renly sends him to Stannis with a note, he stands in front of the Lord of Dragonstone’s desk even after he’s been dismissed. Stannis, after a moment, looks up from his papers. “There was something else?”

 

Jon swallows hard, fingers curling into Ghost’s ruff to steady himself. “Not from Lord Renly, my lord. I... I wanted to ask...” Gods, this should not be so hard to do, but in the face of Lord Stannis’ stern expression and cool eyes, Jon finds his words deserting him.

 

“Yes?” The single word is brusque, but it’s not a dismissal or a rejection, and strangely, that simple fact gives Jon courage. “I wanted to know - my father’s lady wife, she was always very unhappy with my presence in Winterfell. But you, you do not seem to mind me here at all. I know I am your brother’s responsibility more than your own, but it’s still curious to me. I’m grateful,” he adds in a hurry, “I’m merely confused.”

 

Stannis is silent for a long, long moment, studying Jon with those piercing, cool eyes. Jon holds his head high and pretends his heart isn’t racing, afraid of what he might hear. Finally, his stepfather speaks, though his words are not what Jon expects. “Have you any idea of the history between your parents?”

 

Jon shakes his head. “No. They... They say that Father might have married my mother, were things different, but in Winterfell... They talk of my mother’s Dornish blood, and how it made her act too soon.”

 

Stannis shakes his head. “One could, I suppose, look at it that way. But many betrothed couples anticipate the bedding, so many that it is almost expected. After all, many consider a betrothal just as binding as a marriage.”

 

“But that... If my parents were betrothed, Father could not have married Lady Stark.”

 

“No, ordinarily he could not. But it was wartime, and Jon Arryn told your father that being on opposite sides of the war nullified his betrothal. Out of trust or perhaps the sheer necessity of obtaining Lord Tully’s forces, your father believed him.” There’s something in Stannis’ voice; Jon thinks it’s scorn. As though he considers Jon’s father a fool.

 

“Do you think he was right?” It’s another daring question but Jon doesn’t bite it back. No one has spoken to him about this - even his mother said in letters that it was best to let the past be the past, as nothing could change it now. And Jon has always done that, but suddenly he has a need to know.

 

“No.” Just that simple. Just that blunt. “I think that what is done is done, that your mother is my wife and Catelyn Tully is Ned Stark’s, but I do not think Jon Arryn was right, either. I think your father believed it; his much-lauded honor wouldn’t allow for less. But I don’t think Arryn did, any more than I do. I don’t think Catelyn Tully is convinced of it either. You are older than her son, after all.”

 

Jon stares, the implications making him dizzy. “You - you are saying, Lady Stark thought I could supplant Robb and Bran and Rickon?”

 

A slight nod. “I imagine so. It would never happen; Robert would not do such a thing to his great good friend unless your father wished it, and he does not.” That makes Jon flinch a little, for all he knows that it’s the truth. “And so, when you cast off your bastard name it will be to take your mother’s family name, not your father’s.”

 

“But how? If -”

 

“You are a child of good faith, and even if you were not the Martell brothers are fond of Ashara,” Stannis cuts him off. “Prince Doran, as your mother’s liege lord, and yours, as you were born at Starfall, has the right to legitimize you. As for myself, and the way I treat you, you are my wife’s son. I have a duty to do right by you as I do right by her, the same way I would had I married a widow with a child. Now, if that is all, I have a great deal to do and I believe you are expected in the training yards?”

  
Jon nods, and turns for the door, pausing just before he leaves. “My lord? I... Thank you. For telling me the truth.” He meets Stannis’ gaze, and the man holds it for a long moment before he nods and returns to his work. Jon leaves for the practice yards, mind still spinning. And yet, he’s glad he knows.


	4. Playing a Different Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaery knows she must marry, but if she must, then she'll find a way not to lose out because of it.

If Margaery is being honest, on some level she would quite like to be Queen one day. And she’s no fool; she knows very well that her father wants to put her forward as a bride for Prince Joffrey, that her brother and his lover talk of marrying her to King Robert somehow. Her father will never allow for that plan, of course; King Robert has two sons, so even if he were suddenly free to wed, her heirs would not sit the Iron Throne unless the Baratheon line took to the Targaryen marriage customs.

 

She also knows that her grandmother believes they would do better to tie themselves to other Great Houses, if possible. Garlan was wedded and bedded before they even knew he’d done it, a reckless elopement with a bannerman’s daughter - and, in truth, Tyrells often marry their bannermen’s children. Just usually more properly. It worked out in the end, because the Fossoways had been trying to marry off a daughter to Garlan, just not Leonette as she was their second daughter, not their eldest.

 

But with Garlan off the market, that only leaves Margaery, Willas, and Loras. Really, it only leaves Margaery and Willas, because they all know marrying Loras off is a risky proposition. He’s a third son, which means that with his… secret, finding a wife who won’t care becomes that much trickier.

 

No one mentions that Margaery is in much the same position, because she is a woman and women marry where they are bid. So. She and Willas, to marry into Great Houses, if possible. Father goes along with the idea at least as regards Willas, starting negotiations with Lord Stark of Winterfell for his eldest daughter’s hand. A girl younger than Margaery, and who knows if Willas is annoyed by that or not with all the time he spends at Oldtown even now he’s no longer a squire?

 

“You’re brooding again, my lady,” Aislinn Flowers says in Margaery’s ear, and Margaery blinks, seeing herself in her mirror again with her maid leaning down to whisper in her ear. Margaery’s title sounds like an endearment when Aislinn says it, and she turns her head so the other girl’s lips brush her own. The kiss starts out innocent but it doesn’t stay that way for long, not when Margaery wants to outrun her thoughts and Aislinn prefers her breathless and laughing to brooding.

 

All Margaery wants is not to lose this, not to lose her. It’s more than a crown is worth - she’s seen Cersei Lannister, the woman is coldly miserable, unless Margaery misses her guess. Margaery doesn’t want that - and besides, if one is to have power, isn’t is smarter to take power behind closed doors, so those who look to take it next won’t aim for you?

 

\---

 

The whole family travels to court on the occasion of Prince Joffrey’s nameday, to attend the feast and jousting. Sansa is endearing in her excitement, though Margaery is glad that Grandmother will soon be taking Sansa under her wing. She needs it, the sweet girl. Too sweet, as yet, to be part of this world. Grandmother will change that, and Willas will help - Margaery’s eldest brother hides a sharp, cunning mind behind polite courtesies the same way Margaery conceals hers with sweet smiles and Garlan with cheerful friendliness.

 

But for now Margaery smiles fondly as Sansa takes in court and the jousts with wide-eyed fascination. She sits next to her during the jousts, and they cheer Loras on - and Renly Baratheon too, of course. Loras breaks with his usual custom of all white roses and one red, instead carrying a red rose that he gives to Margaery and a blue rose for Sansa. Gods only know where he found a winter rose in summer, though she knows some of the gardening staff at home have been trying to grow many things outside their native season.

 

Sansa blushes scarlet when Loras hands her the rose and Margaery has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at the way Willas scowls. Sansa doesn’t even like Loras half so much as her reaction suggests; his disapproval of her Lady made sure of it. Yet Willas is still jealous, and from the way Loras winks at her when Willas is sharp with him at dinner, he did that on purpose. Well, that is one way to encourage their eldest brother to woo his betrothed.

 

Her favorite brother doesn’t quite have the political savvy Grandmother taught Margaery and Garlan, that their Hightower relatives gave Willas, but Loras is as clever as they are, and he does love his mischief.

 

The next day, Sansa and Willas sit together and Sansa leans into him as he points out the merits and flaws of each jouster’s horse. Margaery finds herself with Renly Baratheon, who was knocked out of the running yesterday, unhorsed by Addam Marbrand. He’s happy enough to sit with the Tyrells and cheer on Loras. “I’d sit with my goodsister and the children, but they’ve got my squire to keep them company, what with Stannis avoiding these things like plague.” He gestures to the seats just to the left of the royal box, where Lady Ashara and her children sit, Princess Myrcella all but hanging off the edge of the royal box to talk to Lady Shireen.

 

For a moment, Margaery looks at them, then at the King, and thinks how curious it is that all his children should be so wholly Lannister, but then she dismisses the thought at the sight of the older boy sitting with the Dragonstone Baratheons, a direwolf at his side. His is white, unlike the brindled fur of Sansa’s Lady. Sansa brought Lady to court but not out to the jousts; it seems Jon Dayne has more nerve than his half-sister in that sense. Jon Dayne, for his part, looks their way and has the strangest mix of annoyance and amusement on his face when he looks at Sansa and Willas.

 

Lord Renly follows Margaery’s gaze and chuckles. “I keep trying to get that boy to relax a little; he’s so very serious. But then, have you met Ned Stark? It must be the cold in the North; freezes their blood.”

 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Margaery says, amused. She doesn’t bother to play the coquette, not with her brother’s lover. “Our Stark doesn’t seem nearly so solemn.”

 

“Well, little Lady Sansa looks just like her mother; must be the Tully in her.”

 

“Mayhaps, Lord Renly.”

 

That night there’s a banquet, and dancing to follow. Margaery dances with Loras and half the eligible young men at court. Prince Joffrey’s hands pinch when they dance, and Jon Dayne is endearingly unsure when she spins a little closer to him than is strictly proper. But as much fun as she has, she watches as well, and she can’t help but notice the way Lord Renly does his level best to dance only with Lady Ashara or her sister Allyria, or even his little nieces Shireen and Myrcella, avoiding the women of the court.

 

He can’t manage entirely, though, and Margaery sees the way Loras’ mouth turns down when someone - the daughter of one of the Stormlords, Margaery thinks - presses close enough to move past Margaery’s own flirtatious impropriety to downright rude. Lord Renly looks alarmed behind his charming mask, and Margaery takes pity on them both, approaching the youngest Baratheon brother for the next set.

 

He smiles at her and she smiles back, even as an idea forms in the back of her mind.

 

_What do I want? What do I know about others, and how can I use it to get what I want?_

 

\---

 

That night, Aislinn rests her chin on Margaery’s shoulder as they lay on their sides in Margaery’s bed. “I know that look you had when you came in, Lady Rose,” she says with a wicked grin that Margaery returns, laughing. “What new mischief are you up to, hmm?” Her fingers card through Margaery’s hair and Margaery turns over to kiss her, her own fingers twining in gold-brown curls.

 

“I can’t lose you, ‘Linn,” she whispers, and Aislinn pulls back, suddenly serious.

 

“Margaery, you won’t,” she says, but her green eyes are sad and they both know she can’t promise that, not really. But Margaery is starting to think that she can.

 

“My brother has a lover in the same place as me, someone expected to marry,” she explains, as Aislinn lies on her back and Margaery leans up on one elbow next to her, her free hand tracing patterns on her lover’s stomach. “Don’t you think the ideal wife for him would be one who doesn’t care that his real love isn’t and never will be her, but his sworn shield?”

 

Aislinn stares at her. “You want to marry Loras’ Lord Renly? But I thought your father had his heart set on you marrying the Prince. Will he allow it?”

 

“Can he afford to turn down the King’s brother if he asks?” Margaery replies. “You didn’t think it would be Father I took this idea to, did you?”

 

Aislinn sits up, Margaery’s hand falling away. “You’re going to approach the Lord of Storm’s End to propose a marriage to him, yourself?” she asks, stunned laughter in her voice.

 

“Well,” Margaery says, eyes wide with feigned innocence, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t.” She laughs, and she’s still laughing when Aislinn kisses her, sending her falling backward into the bedclothes.

 

\---

 

She tells no one, not even Loras. Her brother struggles with jealousy, and even if he thinks sharing his lover with his sister won’t bother him, Margaery knows better. Oh, better her than another, but it will still be uncomfortable for him. So she approaches Lord Renly on her own, finding him in one of the gardens. “My lord. I thought you and I might talk,” she says, keeping her voice light and mild.

 

“Oh? What about, Lady Margaery?”

 

Margaery glances around. There’s no one else within earshot, only Aislinn here as her ‘chaperone’. They exchange quick smiles and then she turns back to Renly. “My brother says that you’re being pressured to marry, my lord. I know something about that.”

 

“And you… want to offer sympathy, is that it?” From his dry tone, Margaery guesses that he alreadty suspects what she wants, but he’s letting her say her piece.

 

“No. You need a wife who won’t care that you bed my brother. I need a husband who won’t care that, instead of being his lady love, I have one of my own. It seems to me, my lord, that we can be of use to each other. And I know that you and Loras have some half-made plan to marry me to a different Baratheon, but how, exactly, will you do that without a death? And how will you make it worth my family’s while without more death?” Murder, she means, of Cersei Lannister and presumably her sons.

 

She tilts her head, and she knows the gesture makes her look like her brother. That’s the idea. “We won’t need to bed often, just enough for children. I’ve no more interest in what’s between your thighs than you do in what’s between mine, but I imagine our bodies are made such that it should be pleasant if we try to make it so. We both get what we want this way, and no one can call it a bad match.”

 

She has him. She knows it. Even as the silence stretches on, Margaery knows that she has Renly convinced. It’s a taste of a type of power, this knowing; not the only taste she wants, or the only type, but it is a start.

  
And more importantly, she won’t lose the woman she loves because she has to marry. Renly and Loras won’t have to hide, neither will she and Aislinn. It’s a victory that makes her earlier resentment all seem worth it.


	5. Wedding and Bedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Renly has wedding jitters, Loras is unhappy about his sister marrying his lover, Margaery is ready to make this work.
> 
> And Stannis? Well... Stannis sees something at the feast, something hugely important that he never considered before.

Robert declares another court wedding. Renly, irritated (because Robert just wants an excuse for merriment that lets him get drunker than usual), counters that if that’s the case, then of course his ward must come to court. It’s not dangerous to bring Edric Storm to court, not when Cersei is taking her brood to Casterly Rock as though she wants nothing to do with Renly’s marriage and the attendant festivities.

 

She did the same, as he recalls, when Stannis and Ashara were wed, though she only had Joffrey to take, then, and he would have been too small to attend in any case. Tommen and Myrcella won’t be pleased; they are fond of Arthur and Shireen, after all, but Renly knows Robert’s so-Lannister children like their mother’s home too.

 

Of course, bringing Edric will remind everyone how he was born - Delena Florent had been one of Cersei’s ladies then, left at court because her mistress didn’t care to bring her entire flock of women with her, and at Stannis and Ashara’s wedding… They said Robert would have had her in the new couple’s marriage bed if they hadn’t been at the palace where he knew the way to his own chambers. He’d pulled Delena onto his knee in the middle of the feast, and Stannis has never entirely forgiven Robert that. Nor has Ashara. He doesn’t think they blame Edric; but then, they’ve rarely seen him, of course.

 

But damn it all. Renly’s fond of the boy in his way; he took his lesson from Stannis, and while he’s not often at home, when he is he does his best by his nephew. Better than Robert, who tells Varys to send gifts and laughs when Edric writes thank-you letters. That aside, he would like all of his family at his wedding, or as much of it as possible since Robert’s children won’t be present. (Though Joffrey won’t be missed.)

 

If he has to be married, he should have that at least.

 

Loras has been oddly restive - he took himself off to Highgarden, ostensibly to help with preparations there. To “tell Margaery about Storm’s End”, as though he hadn’t done so for years with every damned raven. Renly’s no fool; Loras is angry. With him, with Margaery… What did he think, that Renly could stay forever unwed, as he had? That he could leave Storm’s End to Shireen, mayhaps Edric? Not Tommen, though; Renly suspects Tommen will one day inherit Casterly Rock, since Tywin seems determined that it not pass to Tyrion and Tommen is Tywin’s grandson.

 

Actually, Renly probably could leave Storm’s End to one of them if it came to it. He could even leave it to Arthur - that would likely leave Dragonstone to Shireen. But the fact of the matter is that he is a third son but not the same kind of third son that Loras is. He is a lord in his own right and if he does not even try to father an heir it will look ill. Loras should be happy; his sister will not be forced into a marriage that will take her from her lady love, and he and Renly won’t need to hide what they are to each other. Instead he sulks, and then he leaves! It’s infuriating.

 

“You’re drinking rather a lot - for you, anyway,” Tyrion japes, and Renly scowls at him. He’d taken his dinner in private with his old friend, sending away servants and Jon as well. He’d hoped that Tyrion’s company might cheer him, but…

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“Only that you are usually careful not to enjoy wine too much, considering your brother. But I suppose with your knight gone it would be expected. Tell me, did you and Ser Loras part badly?”

 

“Tell me, why in the name of all the gods would you ever think I want to discuss it, Tyrion?” Renly asks, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his temples. “I just - Loras has to know both I and his sister must needs wed someone; that it’s each other will simplify things for all of us. Why he doesn’t see that I cannot begin to fathom.”

 

“Perhaps because he loves you, and does not wish to share, even with his own sister?”

 

“He would have to share me regardless; at least this way we don’t need to hide.” Renly slumps down, crossing his arms. He knows he looks like a petulant child - he feels like one.

 

“And this is why, after my one misadventure, I keep to brothels. It’s much simpler,” Tyrion says, taking on the tone of a sage elder. Renly seriously considers throwing his wine in his friend’s face. Best not, though; it’d be a waste of Dornish red that was a gift from Allyria. “If it cheers you any, you will have Tommen and Myrcella at your wedding,” Tyrion continues. “They wished to stay, it seems, and went to Robert over it. Cersei was wroth, but what could she do? She and Joffrey will travel to the Rock on their own.”

 

Renly smiles. Tommen and Myrcella are both, to his mind, remarkably sweet considering who their parents are. He’s fond of them much as he is of Shireen and Arthur, and it will be nice to have them there.

 

If only Loras would come round, things would be as good as he could ever expect them to be.

 

\---

 

“I confess, I did not think you would marry. I assumed you’d leave Storm’s End to one of the children, ours or Robert’s,” Ashara says, leaning against Renly’s writing desk. Renly, meanwhile, is sitting on his window seat, staring at the cloak she brought him. The same cloak both Stannis and Robert had used at their weddings, that their father had wrapped their mother in. That one bit of shared sentiment makes Ashara wish she’d known her goodparents; that their elder sons, so different, should both want to honor them so…

 

The cloak is a bit faded now, but Renly’s hands trace over it carefully. Ashara understands; she treasures memories of her family as well. As does Allyria, who can barely remember their parents. Actually, in some ways to Allyria they mean more. Ashara imagines the same is true for Renly, as well. Though he’s never confided in her about that, even if he does in other ways.

 

“I always knew I’d have to. My duty, as my brother, your dear husband would put it. And your marriage seems to have worked well enough, so I’ve one good example to follow, even if the only bed Robert doesn’t want a night in is his wife’s.”

 

Ashara can’t bite back the laugh, and since it’s Renly she’s with, she doesn’t even try. “No one wants you to be another Robert, for all you look like his younger self.”

 

“Robert would probably like it - do you know he thinks I’m too much like Stannis? I don’t think anyone would ever say Stannis and I are alike in anything except our loyalty to the family, but according to Robert… He’s been saying things lately about how if he had known how I’d turn out, he’d have got me away from our ‘grumbling, dour brother’.” Renly shakes his head, folding the marriage cloak back up. “As if he could have been half - as if Cersei could have been what you -” Renly shakes his head again, hands tightening on the cloth until Ashara gently tugs it from his grasp.

 

“Renly…”

 

“Do you know, it’s the closest I’ve had, to a father and a mother, once Stannis wed you? That’s ridiculous, isn’t it? But - Stannis was always stiff about it, the time he spent with me, but he did it. Robert could barely be fussed to write. And you, you certainly never had to bother with me, I was just your young goodbrother.”

 

“And the first to dance with me, when my new husband wouldn’t,” Ashara replies, placing a hand on Renly’s cheek. “Renly… What is all this?”

 

“What if I don’t know how to do it? I’m not meant to be a husband, if I were then I would, I would want women as well as men. And you are the only ones I know who have made a marriage work - well, the only ones I know that I trust.”

 

Ashara tugs Renly down to sit in the window seat with her, as though he were an excitable boy again clamoring to know about Starfall. She’ll never tell him, but the way he - and sometimes Tyrion Lannister - would crowd ‘round her, questions spilling too fast for her to answer, was the first balm she had for the loss of Jon. Never enough to truly heal, but it was something.

 

Renly is hers too, in a way, and she wonders if her late goodmother would thank her or curse her for that.

 

“You think your brother knew how to do it? Stannis, of all men? Gods, Renly, he and I still have our difficulties. But what makes it work as well as it does, it has nothing to do with the bedding, for one. You and Margaery will find your own way there; all couples do, it is rare that things are as well-matched as one might expect. The important thing…”

 

“My lady, I can assure you that whatever I may be, I have nothing in common with my brother save our shared blood.”

 

“Well then, my lord, you and I may do well enough after all.”

 

Ashara smiles faintly, remembering her own wedding night and that moment of directness that set the tone for the days, months, years that followed it. “Just be honest. If you wish to know how these things work, and work well, be honest.”

 

Renly considers that, and then grins. “Well, considering that Lady Margaery is the one who made the offer to me, instead of the other way around, I do rather think that won’t be a problem.”

 

“Well then. You should do well enough.”

 

\---

 

It’s not as though Loras isn’t perfectly aware that he’s being ridiculous. He is, and if he wasn’t, Margaery’s irritated comments and Renly’s frowns and rolled eyes would make it clear. He knows his sister loves Aislinn, knows Renly loves him, and he should be glad they’ve made an arrangement that keeps things simple for all involved, but… He cannot. So instead he sits at table even after the dancing begins, drinking cup after cup of Arbor gold.

 

He did stop, early on, long enough to lead Sansa out for a dance or two. Just enough to leave Willas seething and Jon Snow-Dayne frowning slightly. Then he’d gone back to his seat and he’s still there now, watching the dancing over the rim of his goblet. Renly and Margaery are dancing again, and they just look so godsdamned perfect. It’s like a punch to the stomach, how much Margaery looks like him but because she’s a woman, she looks right beside Renly in a way Loras himself never can.

 

“Ser Loras?” Jon Dayne looks like he’s gotten over his irritation at how Loras behaved with his sister, dropping into the empty seat next to him with his wolf in a guarding position just behind the chair. Sansa’s is here tonight as well, which is ridiculous. Wild animals, what is it with the Starks and the wolves?

 

“Do you always have to have the damned wolves, you and your sister? Will my brother have to deal with Sansa’s in the bedchamber? What about whoever you and all the others marry? Will they join in the bedding with their teeth?”

 

“You’re pleasant when you’re drunk,” Jon says, unimpressed and sarcastic. Loras shrugs, lifting his goblet in a mocking toast.

 

“Well, you’d be drunk too,” he mutters, not even thinking about what he’s saying. Jon, though, makes a sound that’s something like a laugh.

 

“You want to be more discreet,” he advises. Loras looks up at him then, surprised. He hadn’t thought Jon had any idea of…

 

“The walls are not… quite as thick as they ought to be, I don’t think,” Jon says. “I’ve heard some say it’s because of all the tunnels in the walls? In any case, I hear things, from time to time.”

 

Loras would be embarrassed, if the Arbor gold hadn’t robbed him of the ability to be. Instead he just shrugs. “Best stay away from your rooms tonight then, or you’ll be hearing more things,” he says, voice bitter.

 

Jon studies him. “I don’t understand. Surely if your own sister is marrying Lord Renly, there must be some arrangement? Why are you so upset?”

 

Loras laughs. “Look at them, Jon. I can stand beside Renly all my days, and I will never look as right beside him as my sister does. Even if he doesn’t want her. Even if she doesn’t want him. And you ask why I’m upset?”

 

The boy falls silent after that, but he stays, drinking with Loras and once, briefly, putting a hand on his shoulder. It should mean little and less, but somehow, it means something after all.

 

\---

 

He stays longer at Renly’s wedding feast than he did Robert's. This is not a marriage Stannis approves of, but much as he hates the Tyrells, Stannis is aware that what they did at Storm’s End was their duty - they had orders from the King they served. He cannot stand the sight of them for the memories they bring, feels even less comfortable in their presence than any, but…

 

He saw his brother’s first steps, his first day in the practice yard with wooden sword and bow. He can watch him be wed, and tolerate the feast.

 

Stannis doesn’t know why his eyes land on the children. Tommen, Robert, and Arthur have been sent to bed, of course, but Shireen, Myrcella, and Edric Storm remain. Jon and Shireen are dancing together, but it’s not his stepson and his daughter who hold Stannis’ attention. It’s Edric Storm and Myrcella, dancing next to them. They look like Robert and Cersei come again, he can’t help but notice. And that - that isn’t -

 

He looks at Shireen and Jon again, something cold racing down his spine. His daughter’s eyes are somewhere between Dayne violet and Baratheon blue, and her hair is sleeker than a Baratheon’s, but still coal-black rather than Dayne blue-black. A subtle difference, but a true one, when standing so close to her half-brother who has Ashara’s hair. Arthur looks - not really like Stannis or his brothers, but his coloring…

 

None of them…

 

He should not be focusing on this at his brother’s wedding, but nothing can stop Stannis’ mind from making the connections, not now, and so he continues, wishing for once that he had a taste for wine. It might wash the sudden bitterness from his mouth better than lemon water does.

 

Both of his children look Baratheon, even with Dayne features mixed into their coloring and their faces. Edric Storm looks so much like Robert and Renly that it’s uncanny. They said the twins born to a maidservant at Casterly Rock had black hair before Cersei ordered them killed.

 

And Robert mentioned his first bastard in a letter. A girl he liked to toss in the air, "with my hair and my eyes".

 

Not a one of the royal children has a single Baratheon trait. Stannis had always blamed Joffrey's viciousness on the Targaryen blood in their line, but...

 

And it isn't that Lannister blood is so strong as to drown all others. He need only look at Robert's younger squire to see that. Tyrek Lannister has the Lannister eyes and hair, true, but a face almost exactly like his maternal uncle Ser Addam Marbrand.

 

So if Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen are entirely Lannister, then... Cersei wouldn't have, would she? Everyone knows she hates Robert's shameless whoremongering. Stannis has always considered it the one thing he and his goodsister agree on. But would she truly risk all to cuckold him in revenge?

 

She's proud enough to want to. Arrogant enough to think she might get away with it. Stannis has no idea who she might have taken to her bed - he can guess it would likely be easy enough. Most of her ladies are her family, blindly obedient and bound to her in any case. They would be unlikely to tell, if they even know. Robert hates her as much as she does him; even Stannis knows they rarely share a bed, and that sort of gossip is the kind he does his best to ignore. (He would prefer to ignore all kinds, but he lives at court, and he’s not unaware of how what begins as gossip can mean a life, before all’s done. Though, mostly, Ashara and Renly listen and he asks what’s important.)

 

She could have done it. But did she? He’s heard that Ned Stark’s children mostly favor their Tully mother; the elder girl, betrothed to Willas Tyrell, certainly looks like there’s nothing of her father’s line in her. Especially standing next to Jon as she now is. It’s possible, unlikely as it suddenly seems, that Cersei hasn’t cuckolded Robert. That the children just happen to resemble her and only her. Mayhaps Lannister women tend to birth Lannister-looking children more than they don’t.

 

Stannis knows he has to seek out the truth, whatever it happens to be. But he must tread carefully; if Cersei realizes what he suspects, he knows his life will be forfeit. If Ashara or Renly realizes what he’s doing, they run the same risks as he does - not acceptable. He cannot confide in Davos either, for the same reason. He can tell none of the very few he trusts, and if he is right, he still cannot be the one to tell Robert. Robert will never believe the words from his mouth.

 

If it turns out to be true. It may not, he reminds himself, though with every second he is more sure that it is.

 

But now, now is not the time. They’ll call for the bedding soon, that ridiculous custom. Renly didn’t forbid it as Stannis had; he’d pointed out, rightly, that it might help scotch the rumors about him if he has a proper bedding. If he’s to do anything about this, he can’t waste his time in mere speculation.

 

He needs proof. And he won’t get that tonight.

 

\---

 

Strange, that she should suddenly be nervous. But as Margaery waits for the sound of the women bringing Renly upstairs, she is nervous. Why she can’t say, not exactly; she’s not a maid even in the most technical sense of the word. Thankfully. It might well be difficult enough just to get Renly to bed her properly. To still have her maidenhead might make the proceedings that much more difficult. Well, she can’t see Renly caring all that much, and it will be nothing to spill a little blood onto the sheet for anyone who might decide to look.

 

For another man, Margaery might have shrugged off the thin shift that was left to her, might have arranged herself invitingly on the bed. For Renly, she simply brushes out her hair with the silver-backed brush left on a dressing table, and goes to stand by the window. She can hear them approaching before the door opens - women shrieking with laughter, and Margaery rolls her eyes. Then the door opens, and Renly, who has been left with no clothes save for one boot, stumbles in. Margaery glances at the boot, then meets Renly’s gaze, raising an eyebrow. He smiles, a bit sheepish, and then -

 

Well, then they both burst out laughing. “How, exactly, did they manage to take everything but a boot?” Margaery asks, still trying to catch her breath.

 

“If I knew that, I’d still have my smallclothes and my other boot. I like these boots, I had best be able to get the other back,” Renly says, looking remarkably petulant. Margaery collapses into giggles again, sitting on the side of the bed to collect herself.

 

“Am I so funny, my lady?” Renly asks, sitting on the other side.

 

“Margaery. We are married now, my lord.”

 

“Then you must call me Renly.” He means it, she knows, but his eyes still flicker nervously about the room, landing finally on the flagon of wedding ale and the two goblets. He stands, pouring them both some and handing her a goblet. Margaery does not like ale, typically, but this ale is made more like mulled wine, with spices and what she thinks might be honey. It’s not so bad.

 

“They say this ale is for courage,” she comments. “Do we need it?”

 

Renly shrugs, draining his goblet. “I think so. We neither of us truly want the other, but we still must… You don’t think we need it?”

 

“No,” Margaery tells him, setting her goblet aside and taking his as well. “We just need to… figure it out. And at least we are beginning from the same place. We will do fine, as long as we remember that.”

 

“I’m told we need honesty,” Renly tells her, though he’s curling a lock of her hair around his finger, thoughtfully.

  
“Well, what is more honest than working things out together?”


	6. A Direwolf's Blessing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willas, Sansa, and Lady.

Willas has met Edmure Tully and Lysa Tully Arryn, so when Garlan helps his betrothed down from her horse, he thinks that regardless of her surname, Sansa Stark is all Tully. At least, he thinks so until his eyes land on the direwolf pup trotting at her side. Garlan sent a raven about the Starks and their direwolves, so it isn’t that he’s surprised. The pup is a soft grey color, sitting quietly by Willas’ young betrothed when she greets him and his family, when they sup together.

****

He hears from one of the servants, later, that the pup sleeps with her, and he rather hopes that by the time they are wed the wolf - Lady - will sleep elsewhere.

****

In the first days of Sansa Stark’s time at Winterfell, Willas does not go to her. He knows he should, that their marriage will never be a success unless they both make an effort to know each other, and yet… He saw her eyes flick to his brace and cane, and though the look was more considering and unsure than scornful, it makes his jaw clench. He does not need the disgust or worse, the pity of a child.

****

At any rate, since he returned from Oldtown he has grown accustomed to spending more time alone or with others besides his family. It’s partly only his habits that keep him from the Lady Sansa.

****

The first he really hears of his little betrothed is from his squire/companion, Samwell Tarly. He and Sam are well-suited, he thinks cynically, a cripple and a fat boy. Though that is unfair; Sam is sweet, first given to him as a distraction. The boy read to him when he was still abed, and now is quite helpful in breeding the hounds and horses. Willas enjoys reading but his memory for texts is not near so keen as Sam’s, and the boy reads all he can of just about anything to do with animals. One day he must send Sam to the Citadel - Lord Tarly can then keep his younger boy as heir and he won’t object to his elder being made a maester if his lord’s heir orders it. But for now he hides in the library or the kitchens when Willas does not require his company.

****

In the library, he comes upon Sam reading, as usual. “Is that a book of songs, Sam?” he asks, amused.

****

“Yes, my lord,” Sam says. “Lady Sansa was in here earlier, she told me she loves songs and stories, so I thought this book of songs and tales of the Free Cities might interest her. Did you know there’s a tale of exiled dragons hiding in the cliffs of Lorath?”

****

“Dragons, or Targaryens?” Willas asks, voice dry.

****

“Well, the wording is somewhat… The Lorathi dialect is one I don’t know how to read as well as the others yet, so I’m not quite sure. It’s curious though, isn’t it?”

****

“It’s probably just a bastard or two if there’s any truth to it at all. Now what’s this about my betrothed?”

****

“Oh! S-should I not have talked to her? I am sorry, I - in future I -”

****

“Sam, Sam. Don’t be foolish. I don’t mind if you speak to Lady Sansa. This is to be her home as it is becoming yours. I am surprised, though; I would have thought her wolf would unnerve you.” It unsettles Willas, after all.

****

“Oh, she did,” Sam says with a nod. “But really, Lady is sweet, not unlike Blossom except already as big.” Blossom is Willas’ best-tempered bitch, and he blinks in surprise. A direwolf of sweet temperament, that seems somehow contradictory.

****

Three days later, when his goodsister has rung a peal over his head about his discourtesy to his future wife, Willas finds Lady Sansa in the godswood. He has a moment of sympathy; he is devout himself, and he cannot imagine how he would feel without a sept close at hand. It would make sense for a Northern girl to feel much the same about a heart tree in the godswood.

****

He begins to approach, only to be faced with an approaching direwolf. “Does she think me a threat?” he asks Sansa with wry humor. Because, really, though he cannot expect a wolf to know it, he is the last one to be threatening to anyone. Even a girl. Why, one hit to his leg and he is down, and so even if he wished to hurt Lady Sansa she could stop him quickly enough.

****

“More a curiosity, I think,” Lady Sansa says politely, and though there is no reproach in the comment, the uncertainty in her eyes is enough of one. He is a stranger to his betrothed and her four-legged guardian; perhaps he needs to change that. So he holds out his hand, palm up, letting Lady sniff at it and decide for herself. She does, and then with a lick to his fingers steps back and flops on the grass like he no longer worries her.

****

Well. He has won over the guardian at the gate; now he must get to know the girl who will be his lady wife.

****

\---

****

Willas’ relationship with Loras has never been easy. He was sent to squire for Uncle Baelor in Oldtown when Loras was only a babe, and by the time he returned home, Loras was off to squire for Lord Renly at Storm’s End. (It had been a good sign, they all knew; forgiveness for the Tyrells siding with the Targaryens during the war.) Then came that damned joust, and his cursed leg, and…

****

Loras has ever been their father’s favorite, Willas has always been the heir, and there is a natural clash between these two things, Willas thinks.

****

He has often wanted to shake Loras for his careless arrogance, but he has never wanted to throttle him. Not even at the Prince’s name-day tourney when he gave Sansa a blue rose. He had given Margaery a red one, after all. Oh, Willas had been annoyed by the gesture, but the only one he’d wished to strangle had been the Prince, until Jon Dayne drew his half-sister away from the little shit. But now, at Margaery’s wedding to Lord Renly, he watches Loras lead Sansa out to the dance floor and he finds he is gripping his cane as though it’s his brother’s throat.

****

It makes no sense. True, he has grown more and more fond of his little betrothed, walking with her in the gardens and hearing tales of Winterfell and the other Stark children. He has learned to smile at stories of little Bran Stark clambering along the walls like a monkey from the Summer Isles, just as he makes Sansa laugh with his exploits as a boy in Oldtown with Humfrey. But they’re friends, that’s all.

****

But seeing Loras whirl Sansa around the floor, his jaw clenches so tight it aches. Because he will never be able to do that. It doesn’t help when it isn’t Loras, when it’s Jon Dayne or Tyrek Lannister or any of the other boys who dance with her. She loves dancing, Willas can see that, but he’ll never be able to dance with her, to make her laugh like that with color in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes.

****

It shouldn’t bother him, but it does.

****

And then there’s warm fur under his hand, and he looks down to see Lady gently butting her head against his fingers. “Hello there,” he says softly, fingers sinking into the wolf’s ruff. Somehow, he feels better about only being able to watch now.

****

\---

****

Lady won’t stop howling, and Willas can’t find it in himself to want to get her to stop. Father and Uncle Garth snap at him to “muzzle the beast, by the Seven!” It would have to be him; since Sansa fell Lady lets no one else near her.

****

Since she fell…

****

Sansa had been racing with Leonette, her friend Jeyne, and some of the girls who had not accompanied Margaery to Storm’s End last year. Willas hadn’t been with them, or he might have tried to stop Sansa, who while far better than when she arrived, is still not the horsewoman the other ladies of Highgarden are. But then, maybe he would not have, because it’s been wonderful to watch her come out of her shell of careful courtesies and learn that she can relax with them. She can laugh and be silly from time to time.

****

Either way, he wasn’t there, he was with Garlan and that turns out to be a good thing, because when they bring Sansa back unconscious on a makeshift litter, his cane and brace are not enough to keep his knees from giving out. Now, three days later, she has yet to wake and Willas would pace if he could. Instead he sits in the wide window seat in his chambers, the seat Sansa claims to be jealous of because she thinks it must be far cooler to spend time there in the warmth of summer than anywhere else inside.

****

If she wakes up, she can stay here as much as she likes, and damn the impropriety. He’ll move rooms if he has to, until they’re wed. He’ll try to force a heart tree to survive in their godswood if she wants it, or at least find the next best thing. The whole Stark family can come to visit, they can go to Winterfell…

****

Anything, if she’ll wake up.

****

He leaves his room for the sept, trying to figure out when his little betrothed came to mean so much to him. He didn’t notice, somehow, but between teaching her to read, learning the tales and myths and faith of the North, swapping stories of their families… She is thirteen to his twenty-four years, she’s still half a child and yet…

Somehow, somewhere, Sansa caught hold of some piece of his heart, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he loses her now.

****

Alla is in the sept - he’s told she blames herself because she was the one Sansa was racing, and while Willas doesn’t blame her, not really, he can’t bring himself to speak to her. So he settles in front of the Stranger, and asks him once again not to take Sansa away, not now. Or he tries to. But, though Sansa always said her mother taught her the Faith, since she came to Highgarden she admits she prays in the godswood more than the sept.

****

Willas has never prayed to the Old Gods, merely waited in respectful silence if he finds Sansa at prayer, but he finds himself leaving the sept and walking to the godswood. He’s seen the weirwood at the Citadel, so he knows the willow at the center of their godswood is a far cry from a proper heart tree, but Sansa’s never seemed to mind, kneeling under it with her head bowed. Willas finds it difficult to kneel so he stands instead, head bowed and the hand not holding his cane braced against the trunk.

****

_I know I’m not yours, but she is and I think I might be hers, please bring her back to me._

****

He only noticed that he can no longer hear Lady's howls when he turns to go and his leg, gone stiff as he stood praying, threatens to buckle. He stumbles and falls forward, but his hands land on Lady's back. Braced there, he is able to push himself up.

****

He is waiting for the pain in his leg to subside when Garlan pushes through the curtain of willow branches to find him still braced against Lady. "Sansa's woken up, Will."

****

Willas breathes a sigh of relief and Lady yips happily, like she understands human speech. Perhaps she does

****

\---

****

Winterfell is... An experience. He and Sansa are here for her brother's wedding to Allyria Dayne - the marriage, Willas knows, is an apology for Lord Stark's broken betrothal to Ashara Dayne, now Lady Baratheon. They are not the only ones. Allyria has all three of her nephews and both of her nieces present. Willas didn’t even know there _was_ another niece, but Shiera Sand is, he’s told by the girl himself, the one stain on Arthur Dayne’s white cloak. She smiles wryly when she says it, and there’s something familiar about the shape of her dark grey eyes, but he doesn’t think on it for long.

****

There is just too much happening to focus for long on a bastard girl, even if he can’t help but notice that her hair is a lighter shade of silver-gold than young Lord Edric’s. Lord Edric, meanwhile, is probably the only person not causing any trouble at all. He’s perfectly courteous to everyone, even offering to partner Lady Arya in her staff work sessions. That is surprising, that Sansa’s sister has learned to fight with a staff at the suggestion of her septa, but then the septa is Dornish and she’ll be marrying a Martell. Willas is familiar enough with Oberyn and his daughters to think that it’s rather appropriate.

****

Arthur and Shireen Baratheon are perfectly polite to everyone; Arthur befriends Bran and little Rickon Stark when they can be talked away from the walls and the godswood respectively, and after an initial wary inspection Shireen and Arya talk like old friends sympathizing with one another about terrible needlework skills. Jon Dayne seems highly amused by that, which is of course one of the main problems. Willas supposes he can’t entirely blame Lady Catelyn for the way she looks at Jon, but he actually sort of likes his goodbrother’s squire - not to mention Sansa and Jon have a friendship she told Willas they didn’t have in Winterfell. “It’s because we’re the only Starks south of the Neck, I think,” she’d said once after Renly and Margaery visited Highgarden with Loras and Jon in tow. And she looks at Shireen and Arthur oddly too, before looking to see if her husband watches them. Perhaps she wonders if he wishes they were his, Ashara’s younger children. Willas doesn’t know and it isn’t his place to speculate, really.

****

Lady Arya practically leapt on her half-brother to embrace him when he and his fellow Daynes arrived the day after Willas, Sansa, Renly, and Margaery, with no care for propriety. Lord Robb is fond of him too, though Sansa was the one to run at that older brother with all her courtesies forgotten when he spun her around in the yard. And indeed, Robb spends more time with Jon, or with Sansa, than he does with his betrothed.

****

She can’t be unattractive to him. Lady Allyria has dark purple eyes and black hair, the same as her sister. Though perhaps that’s yet another problem, because Lady Catelyn looks at her soon-to-be gooddaughter and then at her husband, then at Jon, and her lips tighten until they’re a thin line in her face. As for Robb, he doesn’t appear to know what to make of this older, lovely bride.

****

That changes, or so Sansa tells him when she shows him through Winterfell’s glass gardens. “Robb’s been bringing Allyria here, to show her Winterfell isn’t all cold. And I thought, a lordling of Highgarden must surely miss plants growing everywhere. And look, we even have our own roses!”

****

Willas chuckles at the sight of the pale blue flowers, their scent subtly different from the red, white, pink, or yellow blooms he’s familiar with. There’s something sharper, crisper, and - oddly familiar. “Your perfume is made from these, isn’t it?” Her hair always smells of rosemary but he’d never quite placed this scent before. Sansa grins.

****

“They make it in Lorath where it’s cool enough for our roses to grow, or so Sam told me. His sister Elodie wears it, and Leonette overheard and got a bottle for me my first nameday at Highgarden. I’ve worn it since.”

****

“Sometimes I think I should worry about my squire courting my betrothed,” Willas teases.

****

“You know better than that, my lord.”

****

“Oh, I do?”

****

“Sam is not the only other person by whom Lady stays, is he?”

****

And Willas is left speechless as she continues showing him the glass gardens, and then the godswood. A real godswood, not the pretty tree garden at home, and Willas finds his breath catching in his throat. He may be a devout follower of the Faith but even he can tell there is power here too, a power he must respect. (He would anyway; it was not the Seven who heard his prayer for Sansa, it was her father’s gods.) Weirwoods are whiter than he’d imagined, their leaves a deeper red. Darker than Sansa’s hair and yet… Something about them recalls the red of his betrothed’s hair, just like her eyes are more the color of those winter roses than the Tully river-blue he’d originally thought.

****

Later, he goes back alone, not sure what it is that draws him. Curiosity, perhaps. Walking here is more difficult than it is at home; most of the paths at Highgarden are made with decorated brick, stone, or tile, depending on where. Here they are dirt, and thus uneven. He has his cane of course, but…

****

He also has Lady. And now that Sansa’s commented on it, he cannot help but notice that Lady has stayed with him as much as with Sansa, particularly here. Inside she is usually with her mistress, or between the two of them, but outside… Outside, where she can help him balance. Outside where, until the direwolf began appearing at his side, Lord Stark’s bannermen had looked at him askance, muttering behind their hands at their lord’s daughter being betrothed to a cripple. But once Lady appeared at his side the way the other direwolves stay by each Stark child (and one Stark-looking Dayne), the looks and murmurs ceased.

****

Well then.

 ****  
He scratches between Lady’s ears. “Isn’t that something.”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to save Sam, come on.
> 
> As for Shiera, well... *hums and walks away cheerfully*


	7. The Laughing Lion's Daughter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her mother named her Joy because her father was always laughing... 
> 
> Joy Hill grows up as a Lannister - more or less.

Joy has never been entirely comfortable at Casterly Rock. She came to Lannisport when she was five, her father setting up her and her mother in a neat little cottage on the outskirts of town. But when Mother died, her father took her back to the Rock - and then Father left to go find a sword of all things (Joy does not think it being Valyrian steel is excuse enough), and she remains.

A Lannister by blood, as much as any of her cousins save Lord Tywin’s three, as the late Lady Joanna was a Lannister too, but bastard-born because her parents could not agree on the manner of marriage rites. The d’Altari family holds enough influence in Lorath that for a fourth son of a Great House, Iriena d’Altari would have been acceptable even if by Westerosi standards she too would have been a bastard. Legally, as the daughter of a priestess, Joy’s mother was no bastard and so it would have been fine.

But Iriena would not wed by the Seven, Gerion Lannister refused to marry at the Winged Lady’s altar, and so Joy carries the name Hill and not Lannister. She would take Altari (in Westeros the d’ would be out of place) but apparently she cannot legally do that. Which seems silly, when newmade hedge knights can make up any new surname they wish, but it is what it is, she supposes.

Aunt Genna says it may not matter. “True, your prospects are not as good as a Lannister, but you’re lioness enough that you can still hold your head high. Even bastards have a chance when born into high families and acknowledged, you know.”

Genna is fond of her - perhaps because she has no daughters, and until little Janei is born, no nieces save the Queen, who is a woman grown. Joy finds her aunt rather marvelous, her younger sons and their cousin Tyrek her closest friends. Red Walder is like her father, everyone says so, and Joy can see it in the way Red cares for nothing but ships and the sea and all to do with either. Tion is quiet, liking best to run about wreaking havoc with Ser Kevan’s twins Martyn and Willem, though he always comes back to Joy to have someone listen admiringly to his tales of exploits.

And then there’s Tyrek. Tyrek whose father and mother are gone too, his father to a pox and his mother to a second marriage for the good of Houses Lannister and Marbrand, her own family. Tyrek is closer to her than anyone because they both know what it is not to have anyone who is really theirs. He barely remembers his father and has infrequent ravens from his mother; she has a jar of her mother’s ashes on the little table she uses as an altar for her devotions and a father vanished at sea.

It’s with Tyrek, more than any of them, that she spends her time. They explore the Stone Garden together, run down to the little cove and swim, jump off the cliffs the way Uncle Kevan says Cersei and Jaime did once. Uncle says they remind him of their golden twin cousins sometimes, for all that Tyrek’s features if not his coloring are all Marbrand, for all that Joy’s hair is red-gold rather than the pure golden blonde of the Lannisters.

He does not, however, say it as though it is entirely a good thing, so when they practice kissing on each other Joy and Tyrek mention it to no one. Joy thinks that of course she would kiss no one else because there is no one she trusts so much, but then she remembers a thing she and Tyrek saw when court came to the Rock for a tourney after the Greyjoy Rebellion, Jaime pulling Cersei too close for a brother and sister.

So their kisses and the way they curl together like Tion’s cats, innocent save for quiet, easy brushes of lips, remain their own secret. Until Tyrek is sent to court to be the King’s second squire, and it ends because they have no choice when they can’t see each other anymore. When next Tyrek visits, they are cousins only again. Cousins and brother and sister of the heart, but their secrets stay in the past.

\---

Cerenna and Myrielle are Joy’s usual companions when Tyrek is training in the yard, and once he’s gone to court. They’re Ser Stafford’s daughters, and he is a Lannisport Lannister, brother to the late Lady Joanna. According to Aunt Genna, Lord Tywin has them living at the Rock for the same reason she is; there’s a dearth of girls in this generation of Lannisters and girls are useful for marital alliances if nothing else. Trueborn Lannisport Lannisters are worth something more than a bastard girl of the Rock, but because she is the granddaughter of a Lord Lannister Joy is worth something too.

They could legitimize her. She’s read some of the law books in the Rock’s library; her father mostly lived with her mother in the little cottage on the cliffside. They could be considered common-law spouses. Her uncle is Lord of the West, he has the right to do things like that. But he doesn’t, for all that Joy knows she becomes more valuable as a marriage prospect, the only good a girl can apparently do for House Lannister, if he does. It’s frustrating, but Joy accepts it.

Cerenna tends to ignore her - this is understandable for she is seven years older, and ready for marriage. Miri, though. Miri is Joy’s own age and they are both a little less Lannister than the rest. She’s Stafford Lannister’s daughter by his second wife, her hair is darker, gold-brown waves matched with dancing hazel eyes. Daven teases them both that they’re the prettiest - Cerenna is his full sister but they don’t get along anyway. Daven is too familiar, Cerenna too arrogant, proud of her white-blonde hair and bright blue eyes, of her good match to a lord of the Reach.

It’s not even _that_ good a match.

When Cerenna leaves, a new girl is put in her room. Pretty Rosamund is another Lannisport Lannister, but she looks like she could be a Lannister of the Rock, eyes as green and hair as gold as Queen Cersei’s… Or Princess Myrcella’s. Princess Myrcella will be leaving for Dorne soon enough, as part of the alliances set up by the Lord Hand, Jon Arryn of the Vale. And when the Queen brings her children for a visit, with Jaime to guard them, Miri and Joy can’t help but notice how very much like Myrcella Rosa looks, when you don’t get too close. True, Rosa’s hair is straight where Myrcella’s is a mass of curls, but other than that…

“Do you think they mean to take advantage of that? I heard Lord Crakehall telling Ser Kevan that the Dornishmen hate our family for what happened to Princess Elia and her children, though no one can prove Lord Tywin had anything at all to do with it directly. I asked Lady Genna, she says the men acted of their own accord, her brother was simply wise to press the advantage,” Miri says.

“I don’t think it matters if it’s true or not,” says Joy, who knows it probably is, because her mother told her once that her father stayed longer in Lorath because he didn’t want to come home after hearing what happened in the war. “But if the Queen thinks it is, maybe she wants someone who will confuse everybody if they go to look for Myrcella. Curl Rosa’s hair, put her in front of people who don’t know the princess well, and they’ll think she is the Princess.”

As it happens, Rosa returns to court with the royals as Princess Myrcella’s companion. This time the room stays empty.

It’s only a month later when Joy and Miri are called to Lord Tywin’s study together. They curtsy, then rise and try to stand straight as he studies them, first from behind his desk and then rising to circle them. Miri, of course, is the better-dressed, in a dress of pale blue silk trimmed in Myrish lace. Joy’s own gown is Lorathi-style, because that’s what her mother taught her to make, a soft brown tunic dress and a white sash wrapped several times round her waist. “Court clothes for you both - proper Westerosi garments for you, girl,” he adds to Joy, green-gold eyes cold as he looks at her.

“Court clothes?” Miri bursts out, then turns red. “I’m sorry, Lord Lannister,” she adds quickly when that icy glare is turned on her.

“Yes, court clothes. You are both to go to court to attend my daughter the Queen. She will find good matches for you both in time.”

Ah, and so it begins, the marriage market bidding. Cerenna didn’t need it but apparently they do. Miri may well be sought after; Joy is less sure about herself, though she supposes there are a handful of lords with acknowledged bastards who might be considered worthy enough. Or the trueborn heir of a very minor house, something of the like.

At least it’ll be somewhere new.

\---

She goes down to the training yard to find Tyrek; after all, being in the same place as her cousin is the best part of living at court, in Joy’s mind. She finds him sparring with Joffrey, and after watching for a moment, her lip curls in disdain. She knows how Tyrek fights; it’s obvious to her that he’s letting the Prince win. Joffrey apparently can’t tell, judging from the smug smile on his face. Shaking her head, Joy glances away, eyes landing on another pair of duelers. Both of them seem to be wearing Baratheon colors, but one is in yellow and black, while the other is in black with yellow trim and a yellow stag stitched on his tunic.

That second one is the one who seems to be winning, and Joy can’t help but stare at him. She can’t see his face that well, but it isn’t that he’s the most physically attractive boy in the yard. Looking at features alone, that’s likely Joffrey, or the silver-haired boy in the colors of House Dondarrion. But this boy… It’s how he moves, like the sword is part of him.

She’s seen her cousin Jaime Lannister fight, and she’s seen Tyrek when he’s not playing the incompetent. This boy has the same sort of innate talent.

"He fights like his uncle," a voice says in her ear, and Joy jumps, turning to glare at Jaime.

"How ungallant, that a knight of the Kingsguard should sneak up on a lady, Ser Jaime!" Joy tilts her head. "His uncle?"

"That's Jon Dayne of Starfall, the one-time Bastard of Winterfell. I squired for his uncle Ser Arthur Dayne. He's no Sword of the Morning yet, no more than his cousin Edric Dayne is," Jaime says, nodding toward the silver-haired squire, "but they both have the potential."

"He ought to fight Tyrek - they'd give each other a proper fight. The Prince has no idea what he's doing." Strange, when he looks like a young Jaime. "Which Baratheon does he squire for?"

"Renly. You can tell because his livery is less ugly. Why, little cousin, do you mean to chase your fellow bastard-born?"

The other Baratheon squire's sword flies from his hand, and Joy shrugs. "Call it curiosity."

\---

Joy meets the squire from the yard properly only two weeks later, at the banquet held in honor of Princess Myrcella’s name day. She spends the first hour or so of the banquet with Rosa and Miri, the three of them happily united again at court. They whisper and giggle together as they did at Casterly Rock, watching the pages and squires train. When the dancing begins in earnest, they find partners. Joy pairs off with Tyrek for the first dance, but when it comes time for the second she finds herself looking up into dark grey eyes. Jon Dayne’s grace is mostly left in the training yard, it turns out; he is passable as a dancer but only that. “I do hope I’m not the reason you look so solemn,” she teases when the steps bring them close. He’s so serious, she can’t resist. Jon Dayne blinks, then flushes red.

“I - no, my apologies if I’ve offended, my lady -”

“Oh,” Joy says, letting the Lorathi accent she usually tries to shed color her words, “I’m no lady, just a pretty bastard girl.” He might be legitimized where she is not, but they both came into this world in much the same way. It interests her - she’s never met one of the other highborn bastards before.

Squire Jon looks at her thoughtfully. “You’re the Queen’s bastard cousin. Ser Gerion’s daughter?”

“My name is Joy. Joy Hill.”

“Joy doesn’t sound much like a Lannister name,” he says, and then looks again like he thinks he’s said the wrong thing. He’s adorable. Joy laughs, shaking her head.

“No, it really isn’t. I imagine it’d have been Josiane or Jocelyn or some such had my father named me, but my mother did, and she said it was fitting because my father was always laughing and japing. Never serious at all - my aunt says he was that way all his life.” It’s a surprise that she’s telling him this; Joy rarely speaks of her parents, of her mother with her secrets or her father with his foolish dreams. But for some reason the words come easily.

When the dance ends Squire Jon is drawn off by his half-sister Lady Shireen - Cerenna exaggerated a good deal, the girl’s plainness is mostly due to her greyscale and her blue-violet eyes are striking even with the scars - and Joy dances with Lancel of all people. When she escapes her foolish cousin, she finds herself sitting with Aunt Genna.

“So, the Stark bastard?”

“I thought he was a Dayne, Aunt.”

Genna Lannister huffs. “Not with that face, or the white wolf lurking in the shadows over there.” Joy looks where her aunt indicates; sure enough there is a large wolf there, red eyes fixed on Jon Dayne. She didn’t see the wolf in the yard - hunting then, mayhaps? “Oh, that’s a beautiful animal. Terrifying, but beautiful. Don’t you think?”

“No, not really.” Genna gives her a considering look. “What is in that Essosi head of yours, girl?”

“Nothing in particular just now. Though I think someone ought to teach Squire Jon to dance and Septa Koralin at the Rock said I was the best dancer among the girls.” Joy’s voice is innocent, her eyes wide and guileless. Aunt Genna, who knows very well what such a look means from a Lannister girl, laughs long and loud, not caring that doing so draws many eyes and makes her ferrety husband flinch.

 


	8. The Bastards of Westeros

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon, and other children born without a true name.

Jon meets the young apprentice smith on his first trip to Tobho Mott’s shop - he’s the one who takes Jon’s measurements. The resemblance is striking from the moment he sees the other boy - thick black hair, dark blue eyes, he looks like a dirtier, younger version of Jon’s knight-master. But Lord Renly is far too young to father a son of Jon’s own age or nearabouts, and so…

Lord Arryn, when he came to speak with Lord Renly yesterday and Jon poured them wine, looked between Jon and his lord and said, “It’s as though you’re Robert and Ned in my home again,” with a sad, distant look to his eyes.

One of the King’s bastards, then? The man apparently spends all his time drinking and wenching, if Devan can be believed. Devan and Bryen, Lord Stannis’ other squire, have taken it upon themselves to tell Jon all the gossip about the court, and what they don’t tell him, his cousin Edric does. Edric squires for Beric Dondarrion, and the four of them already make a little group in the practice yards.

(He can’t quite call Edric “Ned” because that’s what people close to Jon’s father call him. It feels too strange on his tongue.)

Jon doesn’t speak to the boy who looks like Renly that first time. He’s not the most easily social person and there’s something about the other boy’s tight-clenched jaw that makes Jon think he’s possibly even worse. (The expression reminds him oddly of one his lord stepfather often wears, actually.)

It’s near two years later when he does, actually. Arya’s latest letters have been full of the staff lessons her septa allows her, and Jon remembers the flat dagger he once had Mikken make for her. Mayhaps now, with the septa encouraging at least some of the fighting skills Arya wanted to learn, he can give her the thing he’d wanted to, now he and Ned and Allyria are going to Winterfell for Lyria’s marriage to Robb.

He goes to Tobho Mott’s shop because Mott is the best, he’s seen enough work from other smiths in the city to know that now for himself. But, as it turns out, even a bravo’s blade for a girl of eleven is too expensive for a mere squire to buy if made by the master. “From one of my apprentices you could afford it,” he’s told, and Mott sends him to speak with one of them. They’re all hard at work, save for the boy Jon remembers from his first visit. He is looking over a breastplate set to cool by his forge, and so Jon approaches him.

“You there - what’s your name?”

“Gendry,” comes the response, and gods, even his voice is something like Renly’s, though rougher with a thick city accent.

"Well, Gendry, Master Mott says I should seek one of his apprentices for the work I want done."

"What's it you're wantin' then, m'lord?" Gendry says, pushing black hair out of his eyes.

“Could you make a bravo’s blade? For a girl of eleven, though mind, she’s like to grow so I don’t want her to grow out of it too soon,” Jon says.

The apprentice boy, Gendry, nods. “I can do that. What girl carries a sword, though?”

Jon grins. “My sister, actually.”

That gets him a startled look, before they switch over to bargaining for the price. It’s still a bit more than Jon would have liked to have paid, but he can afford it, and it’s for Arya. And even after two years, much as he loves Shireen and Arthur, as much as his relationship with Sansa has improved…

Well. None of them know him so well, he does not know any of them so well, as to speak at the same time and finish each other’s sentences near as much as he and Arya always used to do. He likes the letters he gets from Robb and Bran, and the ones from Sansa in Highgarden, but all his southern family knows he leaps for Arya’s letters. Renly teases him incessantly about it.

So maybe he drops by the shop to check on the progress of Arya’s sword more than he ought to. Because it’s for Arya, and because he thinks Gendry actually doesn’t mind all that much when it comes down to it. He seems amused by the stories Jon can tell about Arya, anyway.

***

They travel to Starfall, he and Ned, to collect Allyria for the trip north to Winterfell for her marriage to Robb. She has her companions, among them their bastard cousin Shiera Sand. Shiera had been abed with a fever when Jon first came to Starfall, for what was essentially his own naming feast - that is, his naming as a Dayne and a bastard no more. So he didn't meet her then.

And so, he didn't see that while her hair is much like Ned's, even if there's more silver in it, her eyes... He knows her eyes all too well. He grew up seeing them in his father's face, in Arya's, in his own reflection.

Where had Arthur Dayne found a woman with Stark eyes to bed?

He says nothing, not when Arthur and Shireen join them a day later, not when they board ship for White Harbour. But he does find it odd that Ghost takes to his cousin so well. Oh, he grew accustomed to Jon’s other Dayne relatives, and he’s protective of Shireen and Arthur and Jon’s mother now. He grew used to Stannis and Renly and even Lady Margaery too, though he’s never seemed to like Loras.

But this is different. Shiera laughs when Ghost sniffs at the hem of her dress, when he sits by her on the ship. She curls her fingers in his ruff the same way that Jon does, and while Ghost still comes first to him… It’s like she has a kinship with the wolf as well.

And when they reach Winterfell, when his Stark siblings’ direwolves eye most of the newcomers suspiciously, Shiera is even able to scratch Rickon’s fierce Shaggydog between his ears.

There is something odd here, and it’s only aided by the fact that Jon’s father seemed startled by Shiera’s presence. Anyone else and Jon would assume the shock was for the presence of a bastard, but considering his own history he doubts that’s it.

When Shiera asks him to show her Winterfell’s crypts, well, Jon’s had enough. “You’re a Dayne bastard, not a Stark one. Why on earth do you want to go down there?”

Shiera tosses her hair. “What’s my name, Jon?”

“Shiera Sand.”

“Forget the Sand. Where’ve you heard the name Shiera before, cousin? Hmm? Do tell me. Because it’s not among the list of names of Dayne women, I can tell you that much. I’ve seen you watching me with the wolves.”

Shiera, Shiera… Oh. Jon had always been more interested in the male Great Bastards; to a boy learning history wars like the Blackfyre Rebellions are far more interesting than any woman, even a sorceress loved by two men, bitter rivals already. But even so Jon does remember learning about Shiera Seastar.

“Take me to the crypts, will you, Jon?” Shiera asks him with a sad little smile. And how can he say no? So he takes her down, to the very end where he suspects she wants to go, where his grandfather, uncle, and aunt are buried. Only the lords have statues - except for Brandon and Lyanna Stark. Looking at Brandon, Jon thinks he sees Rickon in his face, but looking at Lyanna…

It’s not an exact resemblance. Lyanna has the long Stark face, Arya looks more like her than Shiera does. But the shape of her nose, and of her eyes, the small, lithe figure… Shiera calls to mind a small painting Jon once found in the Storm’s End library, one of King Aerys and Queen Rhaella given as a sign of favor to Steffon Baratheon, their second cousin. Shiera looks like the Queen, if his memory is right, but she looks like Aunt Lyanna too.

“Your mother told me, not long after I flowered. When she said I was a maiden and not a girl anymore,” Shiera says, eyes not leaving Lyanna’s statue. “She said I had a right to the truth, and that one day you might be coming south and she doubted either of us could fail to notice we have the same eyes. But while I know who my true mother and father are, that I was named Arthur Dayne’s daughter because he died defending me - you see, the Kingsguard at the tower where I was born could not know what Robert’s ally would do to a child of Rhaegar, even born of his own sister…”

“What? What don’t you know?” Jon asks, thinking afterwards that perhaps he shouldn’t have.

Shiera shrugs. “King Robert says Rhaegar was a raper, that he stole Lyanna Stark. The Martells and others in Dorne say he shamed Elia with her, even if he did steal her and thus made her a second victim rather than part of the shaming. And others say that Rhaegar was a good man and would never have stolen her, but if he was so good, then…”

“Why not let her go when her father and brother died?” Jon has heard the different tales himself by now, and his own opinion is that whatever at the start, if Lyanna knew about her father and brother, she would have wanted to stop things, if she was anything like his father or Uncle Benjen. So that means Rhaegar must not have let her.

“Exactly. Your mother says Arthur said something about a prophecy, and maybe so, but… I may be a raper’s daughter, or a madman’s. Certainly a madman’s granddaughter.”

And what can Jon say to that, except the sort of thing that had brought him comfort, as a child? “But you’ve heroes in that blood too, and in the blood here. Same as me, same as the trueborn Starks upstairs. The wolves like you, and they wouldn’t if you weren’t a Stark, whatever your name and whoever your sire.”

Shiera looks at him, the torchlight catching on her hair and her eyes. Targaryen hair, Stark eyes, hidden amongst Daynes. It’s such a strange story, but is it that much stranger than his, another child of the Rebellion? In another world Robb would be Uncle Brandon’s heir with Lady Catelyn wed to him, and Jon himself likely the heir to some Northern holdfast Father held as bannerman to his brother. Or maybe Jon the heir to Winterfell and Robb the bastard, though even thinking that makes him feel guilty.

Had Rhaegar won, the girl standing with Jon might well be a Targaryen princess, and the gods only know what he and Robb would be. No one can know, and all they have is the world they live in now.

***

It’s not long after the return to the Red Keep that Jon meets Joy Hill for the first time. She makes him feel awkward in a way he hasn’t since he was new to court, with her flashing green eyes and wicked smile. She’s as pretty as the Queen or Princess Myrcella, Jon thinks, but with warmer eyes and mischief in her smile.

Which is probably why she has him so flustered. When his sisters or Lyria tease him he knows how to respond, but a pretty girl who isn’t related to him? Suddenly Jon has no idea what to do and the fact that he’s not a very good dancer doesn’t help him any. So, of course, after that, she seems to be everywhere he turns; on the edges of the practice yard talking to her cousins Tyrek Lannister and Red Walder Frey, walking in the godswood, in the stables and always, always, managing to partner him whenever there’s dancing and he has to attend. Always looking at him with those dancing green eyes, smiling and teasing, and Jon’s cheeks are always bright red by the time she leaves but somehow he’s always smiling too.

And then, one day, he falls into step next to her in the godswood, and after that they meet there by intent. Here in the capital ‘godswood’ is a misleading term; it’s more a tree garden than anywhere else, but Jon still likes the quiet of it. Meeting Joy here is not so unwise as it might seem; while never crowded, it’s not a hidden place, it’s not improper. (And they are bastards, Jon’s new name or no; no one much cares.)

“So what are Northern godswoods like?” Joy asks one day as they sit under the oak that passes for a heart tree. She plucks a sprig of dragon’s breath and twirls it between her fingers as Jon considers his answer.

“Not much like this, that’s for sure. At Winterfell, there’s pools, green water, from the hot springs that heat the castle. And the heart tree’s a proper weirwood, white bark and red leaves, with a face carved in the trunk.”

“The Stone Garden at the Rock has - it’s made of marble and jasper, but Martyn once got Tyrion to show us paintings of real weirwoods in the library at home. The one we have looked a good deal like those.”

“It can’t be the same - Starfall has a stone weirwood of its own, from before the Daynes took the Seven. It’s better than nothing and I’m sure the one at the Rock is lovely, but… There’s nothing like a true weirwood. My sister Sansa and her betrothed think it’s likely my knight-master or stepfather will grant me a keep one day. If they do, my godswood will need a weirwood - it would be wrong without it. I suppose that and Ghost prove my Northern blood.” Ghost lies next to them, and he doesn’t mind when Joy scratches between his ears; he even licks her fingertips to make her laugh.

“Well, I can’t talk,” Joy says as she absently reaches up to undo her hair. Loose, it falls in red-gold waves to her waist. Jon wants to run his fingers through it, and twists them together to stop himself. Joy is either oblivious or deliberately trying to drive him mad, he decides as she continues talking. “My mother was Lorathi and we didn’t come to Westeros until I was five. So I keep her goddess, the Winged Lady, and I’ve never been without my little altar. If I’m lucky, I’ll wed someone who will let me have an actual shrine to her, but the altar is good enough.”

Distracted, just a little, from her hair, Jon blinks. “You don’t worship the Seven?” He doesn’t, for all that his mother is a pious woman and he knows one can keep both the old and new gods. As a child he always saw the sept as Lady Catelyn’s place, and he still feels like an outsider when he steps into one.

“No,” Joy answers, getting up and plucking more flowers before sitting down again - honeysuckle, this time, and yes she is trying to drive him mad because she’s pulling apart the blooms to taste the nectar, which means she’s licking the stems, and damn her, now he’s wondering what it tastes like, what she tastes like. And they’re supposed to be talking about gods. “I light candles to the Father and the Stranger, and the others on specific occasions, but that’s respect to the gods of my father and his family, not worship.”

That makes sense, Jon decides, focusing only on what she’s saying. His cheeks are burning again and there’s a quirk to her lips that tells him she knows exactly what she’s doing to him. “The sept belonged to my father’s wife,” he says, trying to keep his mind in the conversation. “So I never…”

“Ah yes, the difference between us. My father never wed.” She tilts her head. “Say, I never thought; you don’t get honeysuckle in the North, do you? Do you want to try it?” She holds out one of the blooms but that is not how Jon wants to try it, not at all. He leans forward, fingers tangling in red-gold strands like he’s done it a million times so he can pull her closer, and honeysuckle, as it turns out, tastes very good.

 **  
**Or maybe it’s kissing Joy.


	9. Wolf Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Past, present, and future at Winterfell.

Arya's new septa sends her to the training yard. Her lady mother does not like it and her lord father seems mostly bemused. But Septa Jorality says that she is too restless, and staff training will help. "Some need activity to settle, Lady Stark. Lady Arya has high spirits, and breaking her to tame her will only leave her bitter. Best to go with the grain, not against it."

Her father says it's as likely to work as anything else, so every morning, Arya works at staff training. She's no good at first; Ser Rodrik has her hitting charcoal marks on an outer wall before she swings at anyone. It takes weeks before her aim is true.

At first nothing changes. She hates embroidery all the more because she's still awful at it but now that she could be in the yard with her staff it's more frustrating than ever. But slowly, as she learns to hit with precision, to lose herself in the swing of the staff and the crack of wood against stone, she finds it easier to be still at other times too. When she says so, Septa Jorality looks pleased, almost smug.

"That was the idea, Lady Arya."

The plan, as the septa explains, was to teach Arya discipline and control. Most noble girls are more like Sansa or Jeyne Poole, who having recovered from her illness is traveling to Highgarden to join Sansa there. They learn control in day after day of sitting indoors sewing, or in smaller keeps working in stillrooms and such. They work out any restless energy riding or dancing. Arya isn’t a very good dancer, though she loves to ride.

After that conversation, things change again. The septa points out to Arya that it was the effort she put in that made her get better at the staff. “Effort will help you elsewhere too - in dancing or sewing, for example, if you want to please your lady mother. Or, perhaps, with music?”

“I can’t sing and I’m not good with the bells or the high harp, that was always Sansa,” Arya objects.

“Have you tried a flute?”

The flute Septa Jorality gives her is made of wood, and at first Arya hates it. It leaves her out of breath and the sounds it makes are awful. But then one day she tries using the breathing pattern she falls into without trying when she uses her staff, especially now that Ser Rodrik is letting her go up against other opponents. And then it’s easier, because she controls her breath, just like she controls which holes her fingers cover along the flute. Soon she can play simple songs, and then more difficult ones. She likes ‘The Dornishman’s Wife’; it’s slow and sad but it sounds so good with her flute.

She finds that she dances better if she imagines the tunes being played on her flute, and finally having some success with music makes Arya wonder if she could be good even at sewing if she tries. As it turns out, she’s never very good at it. But it’s a lot easier to do with Septa Jorality looking on, telling her that she’s improving even if she could do better with that cross-stitch, than it was with Septa Mordane praising Sansa to the skies and telling Arya that she has a blacksmith’s hands. She even manages to embroider a fish onto a pillow for her mother’s nameday, and she’s not ashamed to give it to her.

The one thing Septa Jorality can tell her little of is her betrothed. Arya knows his name is Trystane, and Jon writes that his cousin Edric is close to the youngest Martell. But can she trust what Jon tells her of Edric’s opinion? He’s Trystane’s friend, of course he looks at him positively. So she’s left to wonder, but what the septa can tell her about is the growing notoriety of Prince Oberyn’s daughters, the Sand Snakes. Obara and Nymeria are fighters, the septa says; and so if he has cousins who fight, Trystane Martell shouldn’t mind too much a wife who does. At least, she doesn’t think so. Part of her would like to write, but she’s not sure what she’d say. It would be so much easier if they could meet in person, but for now that can never be. So she tries to ignore the looming future of Sunspear.

Then Jon and Sansa come back to Winterfell for Robb’s wedding, and suddenly Arya looks at Sansa and doesn’t envy her everything. Yes, Sansa is still prettier than Arya, and the pretty wall hanging she gives Allyria Dayne proves she’s still far better at embroidery. But they play a few songs together, bells and flute, and it’s actually fun. Sansa says they could write, and Arya realizes maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

And Jon? Jon gives her a bravo’s blade. Suddenly, Arya starts wondering just what dancing might do for her balance when she’s using a sword, like he once said it would help with her knife. The dancing master never asks about her sudden new interest, which is just as well until Arya can figure out a way to approach Father about sword lessons.

\---

Two days before Robb’s wedding, another small party arrives. Ned knows the cloaked woman even before she lowers her hood, and his heart drops to his stomach as he lays eyes on Ashara Dayne for the first time in sixteen years.

She wasn’t supposed to come, but young Lady Allyria runs toward her as desperately as Arya ran for Jon, or Sansa for Robb, and so Ned thinks he can see why she did. It is just… Just that he doesn’t know what to do, when he is faced with all of it at once. With Jon and Ashara. With Allyria who looks like Ashara when he loved her as a boy, with Cat and her fury. With the girl who calls herself Arthur Dayne’s bastard, but looks at him with his lost sister’s eyes.

It’s as though every sin he carries has arrived to haunt him at his son’s wedding, the wedding that deep down he knows only is happening to make recompense for some of those sins.

Some, but not all.

Is it any wonder, then, that the day of his son’s wedding, early in the morning, Ned Stark seeks out the godswood? It was here that he had once hoped to wed Ashara, here that he finally realized it was time to let Jon go, here that his son will marry the sister of his first love. (And if what he has with Catelyn is stronger for the years of being built, there is a tiny piece of Ned that will always reside with the dreams he and a daughter of Starfall once made together.)

So at first, thinking of those days, he thinks the dark-haired woman standing in front of the heart tree is conjured by his mind. But Ned has never been given to such fancies, so when Ashara turns to him, violet eyes hard and glittery, he knows better.

And he knows that he is answering for more of his sins than he had expected to do before any but the gods.

“I had to see it for myself,” Ashara says. “You spoke of it so often, and Jon does as well. I overheard him telling Allyria about Winterfell once, to convince her that it won’t be so bad to live here. He sounds like you, you know. He has Arthur’s smile and his way with a blade, my sense of humor, but he carries himself like you, his voice is so like yours in those days. Tell me, Ned, when he was here, all those years you kept him away from me, did you ever see anything of me in him?”

Every day something else, he wants to say, but the words are choking him, unable to come out. “Why did you never tell me the girl lived?” he manages, because the sight of Shiera Sand had been an utter shock, that the sickly baby had become a lively maiden instead of following her mother into death. A blessing and curse all in one, this last piece of Lyanna alive and well but lost to everyone, even herself.

“And what exactly would you have done if I had? Pretend she’s Jon’s twin? She’s obviously younger than he is, it wouldn’t have worked.” Ashara laughs, a sharp bitter sound. “You are no intriguer, Lord Stark, and you should not try to be. I took that girl for the sake of my brother who died to defend her, and we kept her because we made her ours. And you have no right to say a thing because you could not have protected her. And you know it.”

Ned is silent, because he does know it, and yet… “I should have been told.”

“You dare speak to me of what should have been? You of all people?” And now the sharp mockery fades, replaced with anger lashing out like a whip. “Have you forgotten that nothing has been as it should have been since your sister got caught up in Rhaegar’s follies? Since your reckless fool of a brother called for Rhaegar to come out and die? Since the day your beloved foster father, the man you wanted your firstborn to be named for, told you that your promises to me, to my brother, all you owed to the child I carried, mattered not at all? Since you married a _fucking_ trout wench?”

Ned says nothing, can say nothing. He wants to defend Jon, to defend Catelyn, but he cannot even speak a word, and Ashara has more than enough of them to fill his silence. “Oh, you think I don’t know why I got my marriage? Because Jon Arryn knew damn well he was lying to you, knew you were bound to me. But he also knew I’d never win that fight, and so he tried to apologize to me by giving me another marriage. To end the scandal, he said. Though I must say, insulting as his apology was, it was more than you ever gave me.”

“I never meant -”

“To hurt me? You know, I actually do believe that. I will say one thing for you, Eddard Stark, I do not believe you a cruel man.” Ashara smiles, a bitter expression, studying him with violet eyes, eyes he once knew so well. _Jon’s_ eyes, in their shape if not their color, he realizes suddenly. "But you were a trusting fool, and my brother is dead at your hand. And all you ever said was that you had no choice."

She walks away before he can answer. It's for the best; he has no notion of what he might say.

He cannot repair the mistakes made with Ashara. But he can speak to Catelyn, to finally to tell her all the truth. To tell her why he could not bear to give up Jon, about the girl he promised to protect but had to abandon in order to do that.

\---

Robb has no idea what to make of his lady wife. Allyria is lovely, but she spends all her time in the glass gardens or the sept, or in her own bedchamber and solar. Sometimes she goes riding, taking Arya along with her. Oh, they’re fast friends, those two - they talk about Jon, Arya tells him, and they talk about horses and the way of things in the North or in Dorne. He understands, a little; Arya is to go to Dorne one day and from what she’s said many noble children interact with the Martells (and so do common children!) at a place called the Water Gardens. So Allyria knows Prince Doran’s sons, and she knows Trystane best - the word is that Arya will wed Trystane, since Quentyn as the older son is a more appropriate bride for a royal princess. According to Arya, Trystane Martell and Edric Dayne are fast friends.

Allyria likes Arya, and she seems fond of Bran as well, listening with apparent interest to his adventures climbing around Winterfell. She even likes Rickon, for all that he’s still so little, playing little boy games with him and teaching him the Dornish version of those games. It’s only Robb himself that can’t seem to get past her wall of friendly courtesy.

Oh, and his parents. She is coolly polite to Robb’s father, and slightly more cool than polite to his mother. Mother reacts to her in much the same way, and Father just seems uncomfortable. Then again, Allyria does look very much like her sister, Jon’s mother, Robb saw that when the Lady of Dragonstone appeared at the wedding. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise.

The bedroom is the only place where they fit. Theon dragged him along to the brothel in the winter town a few times before his wedding, enough that Robb knew well enough what to do on his wedding night. In bed together, he and Allyria can forget about the history that brought them here and just exist in the moment. They're together then, more than themselves.

But only then.

He finds her walking in the glass gardens and he falls into step beside her. They swap stories and Robb tries not to resent that Jon already told her half the things he thinks of. He is her nephew after all - but that only reminds him of the many ways he and his wife were bound even before he draped his cloak over her shoulders.

Too many ways to overcome, Robb thinks.

Allyria falls pregnant, and he does what he can for her - though he can't do much for her discomfort, or cravings for Dornish food. He helps her in and out of a warm pool in the godswood that she says eases the pain in her back, but when it truly counts he fails her.

Robb's father has been present for the births of all his children save Arya and Robb himself (and Jon). He's always insisted he should do so. But when Allyria's time comes... It feels wrong. He feels like he shouldn't see her that way.

So he hacks at straw dummies in the training yard instead.

 **  
**Lyarra Stark has her mother's black hair and her father's bright blue eyes, and she is the one thing Robb and Allyria are in total agreement on. Their little girl is their world.


	10. Green Eyed and Golden Haired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All Stannis has are pieces that don't quite fit. 
> 
> Or, Stannis the detective poking at why Cersei's kids all look like her.

The trouble is, there’s no pattern. Cersei’s children all have the Lannister look, but it’s not as though they’re the only ones. Aside from Tyrek Lannister, whose features are all Marbrand even if he has the Lannister coloring, the lions all much look the same. Yellow hair, light eyes (usually green, occasionally blue or hazel), fine features. All of Ser Kevan’s sons (and he is not particularly comely), even Gerion Lannister’s bastard. Joy Hill has a reddish tint to her hair but that is all. Genna Lannister has one son who is all Frey, but the others are Lannister, save for one boy being brown-haired and one whose hair is the same red-blond as his bastard cousin’s. Even so, the blonds outweigh those of other colors.

According to Ashara after Robb Stark’s wedding, Ned and Catelyn Stark’s children are mostly Tully. And if Cersei did betray Robert, then why do none of her children resemble some other person, the lover she got them from? Unless she took a cousin to her bed - her parents were cousins, after all. But no; none of the Lannister cousins of age lives at court. Daven Lannister could have sired Joffrey, he supposes, during his time as Robert’s squire, but then who fathered Tommen and Myrcella? Lancel and Tyrek are far too young to have done so, though if Cersei bore a new babe Lancel would be a candidate. Even Stanns can see the boy moons after his cousin. Cersei is too disdainful of the Lannisport Lannisters at court to take one of them, though she is less dismissive of them than, well, anyone not any sort of Lannister.

And anyway, it could be that Cersei’s Lannister blood is stronger than usual, since she is Lannister on both sides. Her brothers have no children, or at least no known children - Tyrion the Imp may well have bastards - and Tywin Lannister’s siblings married outside the family so there’s no comparison to make. Estermont blood allows for green eyes; Stannis remembers the bright shade of his mother’s eyes, and Renly’s eyes are blue-green rather than the dark blue Stannis shares with Robert. And with Robert’s bastard son, Edric, but that’s still nothing on its own.

Cersei could have cuckolded Robert. She could have put her bastards in the royal succession. Stannis knows she’s capable of it, but he’s tried to find a sign she did beyond the children all looking like her and he can’t. All he has are a couple of bastards - his own children don’t really count as his coloring is not different enough from Ashara’s to really judge. Against that Cersei has her army of lookalike cousins, and families like the Starks.

He doesn’t let it go, but he puts it to the side. He has no proof, no real idea how to go about getting any, nor even any sign of who Cersei’s lover might be - if indeed she has one. So he watches and he waits.

 

\---

Jon gets approval from Edric as the head of House Dayne to marry Joy Hill, and Stannis says nothing. There’s no actual reason to object, after all. Stannis attends but can’t help how his eyes linger on those Lannisters attending. He has already seen them all at court; Red Walder has the reddish tint in his hair and Myrielle Lannister’s hair is gold-brown and hazel-eyed. Joy too has a reddish tint but like her cousin Red Walder has the bright green Lannister eyes. All three of them have hair some shade of blond, in any case.

Maybe their blood really is that strong.

Then Margaery has Cassana. Cassana, who already has a head of Tyrell curls - but the same coal black as Renly’s, rather than Margaery’s soft brown. The infant’s eyes are odd; a ring of amber around the pupil but the rest deep blue. As though the colors fought, he hears Shireen tell Robin. (And speaking of Robin - he has dark hair, yes, but otherwise he is a Tully.) Another Baratheon child who, in the end, looks it, unlike her royal cousins. Renly is not Robert, of course, but even so…

The Tyrells tend to look alike as much as the Lannisters, as Stannis saw when Renly wed Margaery.

Then, Jon takes Arthur into the city for his first proper sword. It’s his nameday gift, the work done by some journeyman that Jon is acquainted with who works at Tobho Mott’s shop. “He looks so much like you, Uncle Renly!” Arthur announces later. “Or like cousin Edric!” At the same time, Robin visits the Eyrie with his father and comes back full of stories about a mule girl by the name of Mya Stone who, he claims, looks like Renly would if he were a woman.

Renly’s expression at that announcement is enough to make even Stannis crack a smile, but it’s all too much.

When Stannis approaches Jon Arryn, it’s to ask about the girl. He and Renly have been discussing Edric’s future, and what with Robin’s comments about Mya, he at least has an excuse to bring her up. Robert doesn’t bother himself about his bastards, so it falls to his brothers to at least make sure they have a place somewhere.

But Jon Arryn is no fool. “Lord Stannis, why the sudden interest? I doubt it’s merely a desire to check on Mya.”

Stannis considers. Robert will never listen to him, but if Jon Arryn tells him, it will be different. Also, while Stannis respects the older man and would regret it if this brought him to harm, it wouldn’t haunt him as it would were it Renly, Davos, or Ashara. So he takes a deep breath and tells him everything.

“I have nothing solid,” he finishes. “Only many little things that don’t fit properly.”

Jon Arryn nods, looking grim. “We must seek out the truth, beginning with Robert’s bastards. Mya’s mother had blonde hair, as I recall; Delena Florent has light brown hair. But Ser Kevan’s wife also has brown hair, as does Darlessa Marbrand, Tygett’s widow. I shall make inquiries.”

 

\---

The journeyman smith - Gendry - had a blonde mother. A teenaged redheaded whore still besotted with Robert has an infant girl called Barra, blue-eyed and black haired. Jon Arryn sends someone to inquire about a girl who works at an inn in Stoney Sept, rumored to be Robert’s; again she has blue eyes and black hair, though her mother also has black hair.

As well, Jon Arryn gets a book from Grand Maester Pycelle, a book on the bloodlines of Westerosi noble houses. In all previous marriages between Houses Baratheon and Lannister, the children had black hair. In almost all Baratheon marriages, the resulting children are black-haired. In Lannister marriages… Shades of blonde, like most of the current crop, are the most common, but other colors make their way in. So at least one of Cersei’s children ought to look like Robert.

It’s still not quite enough. To prove that Cersei cuckolded Robert, they must identify Cersei’s lover. Clearly, he must be someone with coloring similar to hers, but Stannis is fairly certain he eliminated all the cousins close enough to be possibilities and Jon Arryn concurs. So who…?

In the end, he sees it by chance, much like how he realized the children might not be Robert’s to begin with. Stannis has always wondered at the closeness of Cersei and her twin brother the Kingslayer, but only in passing. He knows little of twins; perhaps it’s normal. But then, at a feast for Myrcella’s nameday, the dancing brings Cersei and Jaime quite close to Stannis where he stands on the sidelines.

Perhaps he would miss it if he hadn’t recently had to see his stepson so besotted with his new wife, and she with him. Or if he didn’t see Shireen and Robin nursing their mutual childish infatuation, or the secret looks Renly has traded with Loras Tyrell for years. But he has seen all these things, and so he knows what romance looks like even if he’s never felt it. It’s just a brief flash and gone, but that is what is in the Lannister twins’ eyes, when they look at each other.

It’s disgusting. But it explains everything.

But Stannis never gets the chance to tell Jon Arryn before the other man falls ill and then dies. After that, Stannis knows he might be next - why did Jon Arryn go to Pycelle, why did Lady Lysa let Pycelle send Colemon away? - and he gathers up his household and takes them all back to Dragonstone.

He cannot take Renly. But Renly’s ignorance will protect him, that’s the entire reason Stannis kept him ignorant. And he cannot take Jon, who is sworn to Renly. But they don’t know, so they are safe.

Renly will demand answers by raven, but he can’t tell him. Ashara and Davos, though… He sees them looking askance at him, talking quietly together on the ship home. He will have to tell them, and he will have to plan. Cersei’s murdered one person to keep her secret.

 **  
**Who will be next?


	11. Wedding at Starfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joy and Jon's wedding at Starfall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we're backdated a bit to see the Joy/Jon wedding; one more chapter after this, which takes us back to Jon Arryn's death and a little beyond. 
> 
> Also, the Lorathi wedding vows are based off ancient Roman wedding vows.

It's a rather curious situation, Tyrion reflects as he takes his seat in Starfall's sept, representing House Lannister at Joy's wedding. Him and Tyrek, who is with Joy now. He'll take a father or brother's place in escorting her - though Tyrion would technically be more appropriate it'll make a prettier picture if Tyrek does it.

And anyway, this whole wedding is a bit... Odd. In a sept, before an altar, yes, but... Around the center candle is a wreath made of weirwood branches. Incense foreign to Westeros, the kind from the Winged Lady’s temple in Lorath, burns alongside the candles, and when Tyrek walks in, leading Joy, he doesn’t walk her to the altar in silence as he would in a typical wedding. The words spoken are familiar, but only from a book - they follow the Northern ceremony, before a heart tree.

"Who comes before the gods?" Jon Dayne calls as Tyrek and Joy step into the sept.

"Joy, daughter of Gerion of House Lannister and Iriena of House d'Altari, comes here to be wed. A woman grown and flowered, she comes to beg the blessings of the gods. Who claims her?"

"I do. Jon of House Dayne, heir to Starfall. I claim her. Who gives her?"

"Tyrek of House Lannister, her cousin. Joy, do you take this man?"

Joy grins, eyes only for Jon. It reminds Tyrion of how Jaime looks at Cersei when he thinks himself unseen. "I take this man."

The next bit Tyrion knows, and he has to force himself not to think of how Tysha smiled, sweet and shy, as the septon spoke the prayers. Well, slurred them, in all honesty.

She'd had no cloak at all, and he only a traveling cloak, but it had served. Not so with this couple. Joy's cloak is gold with a red lion, Lannister colors reversed, and Jon Dayne slips it off her shoulders and replaces it with the silver crescent and sword on pale purple that is the sigil of House Dayne.

The vows, though... The septon says more prayers but then his mouth briefly twists. Perhaps because the vows are taken from another rite. "Where and when you are man, there and then I am woman. When you are happy, I am happy. When you sorrow, I sorrow. Where you are father, I am mother. I am yours and you are mine," Joy says, her accent rippling through her words in a way it hasn’t since Uncle Gery brought her and her mother from Lorath when Joy was five. Tyrion remembers taking a trip with his uncle to visit his pretty Lorathi lady and their sweet little daughter in a cottage outside Lannisport, a tiny stone house by the sea. It had been that peaceful happiness he wanted, with Tysha, only months later. Just that.

And he can’t think about it.

That last bit of Joy's vows Tyrion knows, but not the rest. Jon repeats them in reverse, with less certainty than his new bride. Presumably because they are unfamiliar to him as well. More Lorathi than not, which is interesting, though unsurprising.

Tyrion remembers, after all, how devout Mistress Iriena was. No wonder Joy insists on Lorathi influence in her own nuptials. As for Jon, he seems happy to play.along.

And Tyrion decides he doesn't give a damn so long as the Dornish red is flowing at the feast. Weddings leave a terrible taste in his mouth.

\---

It’s not so much that Arya is excited about her wedding, but she’s not stupid. She can tell the difference between the warm affection Sansa has for her Tyrell and the awkwardness Robb and Allyria have anywhere but when with little Lyarra. (Or the bedchamber, she hears the servants gossip, but Robb is her brother so she does not want to think about that, thank you very much.) She would much rather have what Sansa does, or if not that at least be married to someone she can call a friend. So, when she goes to Starfall for Jon’s wedding, to find Trystane Martell there visiting Jon’s cousin Edric, she fully means to get to know him. She’s brought the weirwood wreath for the sept’s altar, and grateful as Jon is for it he seems a little in shock at the fact that he’s getting married. It’s not even fun teasing him, he doesn’t seem to notice.

So Arya talks to Trystane, enough to know a few stories of his time at Dorne's Water Gardens, to share some of her own tales of Winterfell. He and Ned spar with her in the yard, and they have an agreement to write. It's enough to be going on with, Arya decides, her plans accomplished.

She does not plan on Shireen introducing her to Alla Tyrell.

Alla is there with Lady Baratheon - that would be Lady Margaery, Lord Renly’s wife, not Jon’s mother Lady Ashara, and Arya’s oddly proud for keeping all these people straight because Sansa and Mother would be so shocked she can do that now. Alla is one of Lady Margaery’s cousins, who left Highgarden with her to be one of her companions. She looks a bit like Lady Margaery; they have the same gold-brown eyes, though Alla’s hair is jet black to Lady Margaery’s soft brown. “I’m not Margaery’s favorite, of course, that’s Aislinn Flowers and always will be,” Alla tells her at the wedding feast with a sly smile. “I’m just the odd one out among our little gaggle of cousins, so Lord Mace was happy enough to see the back of me.”

“Why were you the odd one out?” Arya asks, and Alla tips back her head to laugh, a bright pealing sound that leaves Arya feeling strange, warm and flustered.

“I kept sneaking off to the loomhouses, and a high lady of the Reach only embroiders, she does not weave,” Alla tells her in a mock-snooty tone that reminds Arya so much of Septa Mordane she can’t help but grin. And after a moment’s thought, she thinks this makes sense.

“Old Nan said we ought to weave, but Mother said no… It’s different in the North, you wouldn’t get in trouble there.”

“Oh yes I would,” Alla says, still laughing, is she always laughing? But it’s not like when Sansa and Jeyne Poole would giggle together, years ago. This time Arya feels like she’s being pulled into the joke, like the laughter is for her, a bright warm thing like sunlight to join in on. “The rest of the time I’d be pestering the maester or Squire Sam who’s going to be a maester one day about herbs and medicines and things. Only proper for midwives and other smallfolk, you know. I still do that at Storm’s End, but Maester Caledon isn’t so bothered by it and Lord Renly thinks it’s hilarious.”

“They call me Arya Underfoot,” Arya volunteers. Even though she doesn’t do quite as much wandering around as she did when she was younger, her father always wants to know what’s happening in his keep. He sits a different person beside him each night, and Arya thinks her own explorations, learning how to work a bellows from Mikken, how to card wool from Old Nan, getting to hold new babies, and all the rest are part of that too. “I’m always poking my nose into everything. I know how to work a bellows, make a bruise balm, and fix a saddle - only real useful sewing I’ve ever done except mending clothes, and much more fun.” Arya doesn’t like mending, but she can admit the use of it. Especially since she began practicing with staff and Needle - she tends to have little tears that need fixing more than she doesn’t.

“Quite a lot of things you’re not supposed to know then,” Alla says with a laugh. “It’s fun, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Arya agrees, wondering why she gets all the more flustered when Alla catches her wrist and tugs her into the dancing. Surely it’s just the mead with ginger and cinnamon (it’s some kind of Lorathi thing) making her feel so overwarm?

\---

Jon can admit he's still oddly shocked. Oh, since he was legitimized he knew he'd likely marry; he's heir to Starfall till Ned marries and has a child, after all. It's just that he -

Joy nudges him and smiles, and Jon smiles back. "All right there, my lord husband?" she asks in her teasing voice, that hint of accent stronger again, like in the sept.

Jon drinks deep from his glass of Lorathi wedding mead, spiced with ginger and cinnamon, not sure what to say. "I'm still - I can't quite believe we've done it."

"Oh, well, believe me, we have, and now we have to dance. Remember what I taught you?"

And Jon has to laugh as he takes his bride's hand and they walk to the center of the room. Because yes, he remembers Joy claiming she was only seeking him out because someone needed to teach him how to dance. "I think those lessons were only a feint, my lady," he says as they circle each other in the first steps.

"Of course, but see: they helped you anyway!" Which is true enough, Jon has to admit, if only to himself as Joy spins away. It's only a minute before he has hold of her again, though. And he's half Dornish, at a Dornish wedding; no one cares when he pulls her too close, arms around her waist as he kisses her. Joy laughs against his lips - our Laughing Lion's daughter, her aunt Genna told him when Jon asked her, as Joy's guardian, for permission to wed her. Joy laughs, and parts her lips under his as she presses closer. She tastes like the wedding mead, her blue tunic dress and sash fits her like a glove, and Jon has to break the kiss before the feel of her against him undoes what control he still has.

They don't dare partner each other again, but their eyes keep finding each other as they dance with others. It makes it easier for Jon to weather the sisterly teasing from Arya and Shireen, and even the japes from Lady Margaery that usually would turn him bright red hardly register as he looks for the flash of green eyes.

Joy is with her cousin Tyrek, then Ned, then Arthur, then the Martell princes young and older (Prince Oberyn came to collect his nephew and happened to arrive last night). But always she looks for him, and he grins like a fool when she winks at him from Lord Renly's arms, which makes Alla Tyrell, his current partner, giggle at him.

Jon doesn't mind at all.

He only looks away from Joy when he partners his mother, whose eyes are bright as she looks at him. "Do I still look like your brother?" he hears himself say, remembering when she said that, the day they met. In truth, Arthur is the one whose features truly resemble his namesake, and the mirror tells Jon he looks like a southron version of his uncle Benjen most of all. But Ashara smiles, reaching up to cup his cheek.

"You still have his cheekbones, and you look at Joy the same way he looked at his lady love. So yes." Jon wonders who that was, because he knows the truth about Shiera, but it doesn't matter.

"I'm glad I came to you. Not just - all of it, Mother. No regrets, none at all." His Stark family will always be precious to him - his wedding would have felt incomplete if Arya couldn't come, and the one cloud on the day is that Father and Robb and the boys could not, that Sansa is preparing for her own wedding and couldn't either. But Arya _is_ here, Shireen and Arthur, Ned and Shiera, his mother and stepfather and Renly are here. He has two families, and though he cannot have them all together, he is luckier than many people in this.

"On days like this, my dear one, neither do I," his mother says, forehead pressed to his for a moment.

Jon is dancing with Shireen again, spinning her so she laughs and forgets that her Robin isn't here (Lady Lysa insisted he not come, using Jon being raised in a way that insulted her sister as an excuse to keep her son close) when Ned calls for the bedding. Jon doesn't have time to scowl at the sight of the men converging on Joy before the ladies surround him, grabbing at his clothes.

Jon isn't sure how he reaches the bedchamber in the Palestone Tower, but he's certain his feet rarely touch the ground. He's also absolutely certain it was Lady Margaery who slapped his arse before shoving him through the door, but he doesn't have a chance to check.

He's left in nothing but his loincloth and, oddly, one sock, but he forgets that when he sees Joy at the window. She turns to look at him and is wearing nothing but her rose gold lion medallion and a wicked little smile.

"Turns out a tunic dress and sash are easy to remove," she says, reaching up to undo the braids in her hair. Jon crosses the room and catches her wrist, unwinding the locks of hair himself until her red-gold hair is loose around her face and he can run his fingers through it as he always loves to do.

This time, when they kiss, there's no reason to ever stop.

**  
  
**


	12. Colors On the Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's much Robin Arryn hates about his illness, but the colors that follow sounds through the air is something he's learned to love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Robin with synesthesia was something I got from a fic in another fandom where a character was given it along with epilepsy. It was a very interesting extra sense to have a POV have, and so synesthete!Robin was born. 
> 
> Also, here we have the final chapter of Sweet Summer Children. The next fic, We'll Ride (In the Gathering Storm) will cover the majority of AGoT events, as well as some glimpses of places we didn't see in the novel, such as Dragonstone and Highgarden.

Sometimes Robert Arryn thinks the tea he drinks is the worst part of his illness. Until his next shaking fit, of course. But it tastes awful, and he has to drink it every morning. It’s a mix of herbs, one Maester Cressen taught him just in case, because one day he won’t be there to make it and Robin’s better off doing it himself than trusting it to a succession of maesters. Something about different hands muddling the recipe, or so Cressen says. It helps keep the number of fits he has down, helps his hands be steady more days than not, so Robin drinks it and practices making it, doing as he’s told even if he doesn’t much like it.

It hasn’t always been like this. When Robin was seven and first joined Lord Stannis’ household, he threw the cups of tea against the wall and demanded his mother. He screamed until he set off shaking fits. No one understood but Mother, no one else knew how awful he felt, about how sounds made colors in the air. Mother told him to hide it, to tell no one of what he saw. That bit of his mother’s advice he’s kept, at least so far. He doesn’t want people to think he’s mad as well as unhealthy.

But as for the rest of it… Shireen made all the difference. She used to sit with him and read aloud till he was calm again, or just sit and talk when he wasn’t so upset. And she had greyscale scars, people stared at her too, they were alike. Slowly he began telling her about the Winged Knight when she talked about Elenei and Durran, they began to share stories and read books together. And he stopped throwing tantrums, began to settle into the household of the Baratheons of Dragonstone.

He’s eleven now, and while his shakes mean he can’t learn to wield a sword, he can go to the yard to watch. He learns to have an eye for fighting skill - the Dayne boys and Tyrek Lannister are the best among the squires by far, and Robin loves to watch them spar against each other. Sword clangs bring a shine to the air like light glinting on steel, mingling with the rainbow colors of voices.

Robin’s come to like the colors. As a little boy they distressed him, especially with how much Mother stressed the need to hide them. Now, though, he enjoys them because they add to his world.

Father’s voice is a warm brown, with all the strength his age has leeched from the reedy sounds. Lord Stannis has a sort of olive green; it’s not a very pleasant shade but it’s solid, reliable. Lady Ashara’s voice is soft paile blue, calming whenever Robin sees it. Arthur is copper, Lord Renly the bright green of summer grass, Jon Dayne a bluish-grey, Ser Davos and his son Squire Devan dark and bright blue. Mother’s voice is pink, the color fading more with every passing year. It hurts to see that.

Other voices he doesn’t like - King Robert’s voice is an ugly shade of red that hurts Robin’s eyes, while Queen Cersei’s is blue-white like ice. Lord Baelish makes the color return to Mother’s voice but his own voice is poisonous green. Grand Maester Pycelle’s voice is a sickly yellow-brown, Maester Colemon’s a dirty grey, which is why Maester Cressen with his cream-colored voice is the only maester Robin trusts. Prince Joffrey’s voice is an awful oily black, as unpleasant as either of his parents - strange, with Myrcella’s dark orange and Tommen’s silvery-white being among Robin’s favorites to see.

 

So many voices and each a different shade. But no matter how many waves of color flow and twist in the air, Robin can always find the warm sun-yellow that is Shireen’s voice.

 

\---

There are days when Robin watches the sword practice and his fingers itch to try it: he longs to be part of that rainbow, a normal boy for once. He can ride well enough, at least, with a special saddle designed to prevent him from falling should a fit take him. But he can’t joust any more than he can spar.

Those days he leaves that part of the practice yard for the archery butts, to remind himself that if he can’t wield a sword or lance, he can use a bow at least. It was Ser Davos’ suggestion at first, that perhaps he could learn to work a bow. So Robin had gone to Ser Aron Santagar, trembling for once from the normal cause of nerves. The master-at-arms had suggested in a sand-colored voice that he try a recurve bow rather than a longbow; a bit trickier to string but a stronger bow with more range, and also smaller so easier to handle.

Robin’s fingers aren’t always steady but he’s worked to get a good aim. And with a bow in his hand he’s less jealous of the other boys with their swords.

Especially the day when his father comes to watch and he manages a good hit every time. The twang of the bowstring makes flickers of orange dance in the air, and the deep brown of Father’s voice surrounds him, warm and safe and proud.

Three days later, Father falls ill, and two days after that he dies. “The seed is strong,” he whispers to the King, and for all to hear Mother calls it a blessing for him, her voice a swirl of the familiar faded pink and a garish magenta. Robin doesn’t like that, it leaves him unsettled, but what can he say, when the pale teal of his own voice will only fade away under all the brighter, stronger shades around him? What is there to say when all he knows is that something is wrong?

He and Mother take Father’s bones back to the Eyrie, and in the basket riding up, Mother whispers, “Not strong enough, please,” with a hand pressed to her stomach, and her voice is all that awful magenta now.

“Mother?” Robin asks?

“Oh, sweetling… You’re going to have a little brother or sister,” she tells him, her blue eyes just like Robin’s alight in a way he’s never seen. “A sister, I think, a pretty little thing named Alayne for her grandmother… Would you like a sister, Robin?”

Robin nods, watching magenta swirl around them before it fades, and doesn’t mention the fact that neither of his grandmothers were named Alayne, and so how can his sister - if indeed he is going to have a sister - have a grandmother named that? Mother continues to murmur, little sparks of awful color, and Robin closes his eyes and thinks of blues and greens. Copper and brown and sun-yellow.

They don’t go back to court. Instead, Mother closes up the Eyrie, and when Robin tries to get herbs from Maester Colemon to make his tea, the maester tuts and gives him another tonic. “This is far better, healing properties in the… type of milk, and of course dreamwine to soothe you…”

It tastes awful, worse than the tea - Robin doesn’t like wine at all and the milky taste… Well, his mother had him on the breast till the day he was sent to Lord Stannis, he remembers the taste and he thinks… He is going to try not to think about it. But the ‘tonic’ makes him tired and lightheaded and he only takes it twice before resorting instead to pouring it out his window and staying in his room most of the day. If he didn’t, the maester might see he’s not dazed and sleepy, and make Robin drink it in front of him.

Instead, he makes up his tea from the herbs Maester Cressen slipped him before he left, from the herbs he talks his cousin Harry into stealing for him. Harry is his heir; he’s not a bad sort, and sees the stealing as a challenge, laughing and making jokes in a voice the color of red wine, a far better red than King Robert’s.

But neither of them can send ravens. Robin tries alone, Harry tries alone, they try together, while the lords get restless circling Mother as she sits on the Weirwood Throne as Robin’s regent, her belly swelling with what she says is a second Arryn baby. (But there are no Alaynes in the Arryn or Tully family trees.)

“Lady Arryn has commanded that you boys are not to send letters,” Maester Colemon says, the ugly grey of his voice like dirty snow turned to color swirls around them. Robin wants to flinch from it, wants to tell Harry not to let it touch him, but he says nothing. “You are to speak to no one outside these walls, because it’s far too dangerous.”

“Indeed,” Mother says from behind them, and she dismisses Harry with a gesture. “No one is to take you away again, my Sweetrobin,” she tells Robin in a soft voice that somehow scares rather than comforts, magenta burning his eyes even behind closed lids. He can’t make her change her mind, not even when he appeals to Uncle Brynden, with his cherrywood red-brown voice, enough like Father’s to give Robin comfort, but far more vibrant. Instead, he finds that he no longer sees his uncle,

 **  
**Greens and blues and copper and brown. Greens and blues and copper and brown. And bright sun yellow that chases away everything. He tries to remember what the colors look like in this home that isn’t home, but Robin’s afraid magenta and filthy grey and all the shades of the Vale lords will wash them away. And he doesn’t think wine red is strong enough to cling to and feel like he’s not alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is Lysa deluding herself? Only time - and the next fic - will tell... ;)


End file.
